


you are the light, the calm in the day

by loosecannon, sheepknitssweater



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Being Gay and Talking About It, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, F/F, M/M, Shrunkyclunks, Sorry About It, The Nat Romance is a B-Plot at Best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-19 19:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14879970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loosecannon/pseuds/loosecannon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheepknitssweater/pseuds/sheepknitssweater
Summary: Bucky Barnes is a Stark Industries engineer. Steve Rogers is having trouble adjusting to the 21st century for more than one reason. They meet in a broken freight elevator and bond over lavender, bagels, and embarrassing cigarette choices.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i do want to make it clear that i am writing bucky as a post-bro-y young upstanding professional as accurately as i know how, which is by making him the sort of person who puts "straight-acting straight-appearing" in all his online dating profiles. i am not a post-bro-y young upstanding professional, and his views do not reflect my own.

Bucky Barnes took the freight elevator because he hated the fact of his job, basically, even though he liked doing it. He liked the accoutrements of yuppie-dom; he didn’t like the people, or the places, or, especially, the elevators. Stark Industries had a lot going for it, but atmosphere wasn’t on the list.

Maybe it was, actually. But Bucky’s perception of atmosphere was terminally skewed—war did that to a person. Also, taking the freight elevator meant he could slip out and make his lunch order, which embarrassed him immensely, without garnering any comments. Sparkly-eyed interns liked to ask him whether his salad was from SweetGreen or Chop’t, then to ask him what dressing he got, then to make Bucky uncomfortable with any of the faces they could potentially make in response. People with unwieldy objects on their hands (other than iPads, generally) did not find it necessary to comment.

It was early afternoon, a Tuesday, and Bucky was on his way back from a salad place the name of which he planned never to reveal to his colleagues, preparing to eat it at his desk while he got increasingly angry about test cases. He hit the “up” button, headphones still in. He was on autopilot while the doors closed behind him, too, and he closed his eyes as he leaned against the elevator wall. He hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before: too much nicotine, then a night terror, then a thousand ambulances barreling toward some location adjacent to Prospect Park. So: his brain was making up for lost time. One thing he did appreciate about Stark Industries: the whole panopticon deal rendered hyper-vigilance pretty redundant.

It made up for lost time until the elevator ground to a halt. Bucky opened his eyes, but the doors were still closed: it wasn’t his floor. It wasn’t anyone else’s floor.

Then Bucky realized that “anyone else,” in this case, was Captain America.

+++

Captain America looked nervous. “Um,” Captain America said, cautiously, “hello. Do you have any idea what’s happening?”

What the fuck. “It’s, um,” Bucky said. “It’s stuck.”

“Yeah,” Captain America said. “But—how?”

“I…” Bucky blinked. Captain America was looking at him now. Captain America seemed tired. Captain America was asking him what happened to the elevator.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. Then he realized that he did. “Fucking Tony Stark,” he said.

“What?”

“He—” Now Bucky had sworn, loudly, in front of Captain America. Captain America, from World War II, and also movies. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry,” Captain America said. “What did Tony do?”

Tony. He was on a first-name basis with Tony Stark. Obviously. “This—elevator accessibility thing. I don’t know, my boss told me. Said it might get tested out on… somewhere.”

“This isn’t very accessible,” Captain America said.

“Yeah.” Bucky stood in a state of mild shock for another moment. Then, suddenly, his brain recommenced functioning. “I’m gonna try to figure this out, okay? But, uh, I’m Bucky.”

“Steve,” Captain America said. What the fuck. They shook hands. What the fuck. Captain America was very strong. What the fuck!

Bucky turned around, but Captain America kept talking. “You work with Tony?”

“Not really,” Bucky said. “I’m in biomed engineering.” When Captain America didn’t say anything, he continued politely, “build shit and do math, basically. Nothing exciting enough for Iron Man.” (Swearing didn’t cause any particular disasters the first time around.)

“Building shit and doing math is most of Tony’s job, too,” Captain America said. It was probably stupid that hearing him swear in person jarred Bucky so much.

“He builds really good shit, though.” Bucky turned away from the button panel after very methodically banging on all the keys in the hopes that one of them would do something. None had. Captain America’s hands were shoved into his pockets—gray slacks, cheap-looking ones. He probably got them from Target. (Haha, the logo looks like his shield, Bucky’s brain supplied, unhelpfully.)

It was sort of psychologically devastating, seeing Captain America in boring pants and a shirt with a slightly frayed hem. The devastation was only compounded by how unbelievably hot Captain America was. Onscreen, he seemed like a movie star or a particularly well made-up politician, good-looking like anyone on camera could be. But all of that carried over, with something else besides, to real life. It wasn’t just his ridiculous biceps, or his ridiculous eyes, or how generally broad and chiseled he was. He held himself awkwardly, slouched and sort of sheepish, but with a strength different from what throwing a shield around required. There was a high-frequency energy in him, something frantic and determined, even when there was nothing to be determined about and he seemed to be handling the elevator stoppage frenzy-free.

Captain America seemed scrappy. Bucky didn’t know what it said about him that this was making his palms sweat.

“No cigar,” Bucky said. He scrubbed a hand across his face. “Shouldn’t have said that. God, I need a cigarette.”

“Me too,” Captain America muttered.

Bucky blinked. He assumed he’d be getting a lecture about his heart health by now. Then again, Captain America was from the ’30s, when all the clean-cut, grass-fed men smoked, too.

Captain America seemed to confuse Bucky’s surprise for disapproval. “The lungs heal themselves,” he said defensively. “They’re doing a thousand drug trials on me to see what heals emphysema. Kind of makes cutting down less appealing.”

Bucky laughed. “Of course you smoke for a good cause.” When Captain America didn’t relax, he continued, “hey, I’m not judging. I’ve got no excuse, and my lungs definitely don’t heal themselves. I’m banking on those emphysema drugs you’re testing.”

That made Captain America laugh softly. “Good to know they could be helping somebody out. Someday. Nobody smokes anymore.”

No straight people smoke, Bucky thought, but didn’t, obviously, say. He wasn’t insane. If he was trapped in an elevator with Captain America, he could keep up the smokescreen of heterosexual masculinity long enough to get out. He’d kept it up in plenty of other situations.

+++

After several minutes of deliberation, sitting with his back to the wall and his knees to his chest, Bucky bit the bullet. “Okay if I eat in here?”

“Of course,” Captain America said immediately, then made a brief, pained expression. He was sitting in a position mirroring Bucky’s, leaned against the opposite wall.

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”

“No, no, go ahead, please.”

It took a moment of squinting before Bucky realized. “Wait,” he said, “don’t you metabolize crazy fast?”

Captain America shifted uncomfortably. “It’s—well, yes, but it’s not…”

“Are you hungry?”

Another pained expression. “I’m fine,” he said. “Really, I—“

“I’m not eating this unless you do, man,” Bucky said, then regretted the decision to call Captain America man. “Please?” he added, trying to cushion its effect.

“I can’t take your food,” Captain America said.

“You save the world all the time,” Bucky said. “That’s payment. Or Venmo me or something, I don’t care. Just eat the salad.” No no no, he thought, and felt himself turning red. He was very lucky that he was talking to a red-blooded American man from 1935 who probably didn’t know about Urban Dictionary.

Captain America sighed. Bucky, despite his blush, thrusted the salad towards him. “Come on,” he said. “I grabbed a shit-ton of forks to keep in my desk. You can eat off the lid.”

After eying him for a moment, Captain America gave in. “Thank you so much,” he said as Bucky started the preparations. “Really, you didn’t have to do this.”

“I’m telling you, it’s nothing,” Bucky said. “You want dressing?”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Not even gonna ask what’s in it?”

Captain America gave him a somewhat dry look. “My palate isn’t very refined. After the war and all.”

“Hey,” Bucky said, “I lived through three years of MREs, and I still care whether or not I get lavender-infused dressing.” He decided not to care how low the likelihood that Captain America would ever say the word ‘infused’ was.

“Lavender-infused?” Captain America repeated, incredulous. (He didn’t stumble over ‘infused,’ though.) Then he looked horrified with himself. “I’m sorry I assumed that you hadn’t served,” he said.

Bucky ignored the second part of that. “Yeah, lavender,” he said. “It’s delicious.”

Captain America eyed the container. “You mean the herb?”

“That one.” He held the dressing out. “You can dip a leaf in or something.”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“It literally does not make a difference to me.”

Captain America dipped a spinach leaf into the dressing, then made a horrified face. “It tastes like soap,” he said.

“Delicious soap,” Bucky said, pouring the entire container over his portion. It turned the salad into a kind of dressing-soup. He was pleased with this state of affairs.

“They put it in coffee, too,” he continued, conversationally. “Lavender. ’S’good.”

“Is that how they get the foam?”

Bucky blinked at him for a moment, then sputtered with laughter. “Jesus,” he said. “You know bars of soap don’t grow out of the ground, right? Lavender’s its own plant.”

“I grew up in Brooklyn.”

“So did I, but I know from lavender.”

“Well,” Captain America said, “my friend—we had a garden, right before the war. But he wasn’t growing lavender.” He paused, then continued, sort of haunted: “Just zucchini.”

“Zucchini?”

“A lot of it,” he supplied, and shoveled some salad into his mouth. Captain America was an alarmingly fast eater. Bucky supposed that this was an important skill for someone who had to consume so many calories.

It must be weird to have everyone you meet know how many calories you have to consume. Bucky shuddered. He was glad he didn’t appear in any high school history textbooks.

“Where in Brooklyn?” Captain America asked after swallowing.

“Midwood,” Bucky replied, “but I live in Prospect Heights now. How about—“ he started, then realized they both already knew the answer.

“Navy Yard, then Red Hook,” Captain America said anyway. Bucky didn’t know about the Red Hook bit, actually. “Bushwick now, when I’m here.”

Bucky tried not to let his eyes pop out of his head. He grunted assent instead of screaming _Captain America is a 23-year-old with a noise band_. “Bet it’s changed a lot,” he said. “Brooklyn, I mean.”

Captain America looked at his salad dejectedly. “I couldn’t have lived here on the money I had then. Or triple it.”

Bucky nodded. “My parents had to move to a studio,” he said. “They’re 62. Fuckin’ crazy.”

Gratifyingly, Captain America looked outraged. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah.” Bucky chewed a mouthful of salad. “But, hey,” he said, after swallowing, “you been to WestWay Bagel?”

+++

“This stupid thing,” Captain America muttered. He was squinting at his phone. “Still doesn’t have any service.”

“A lot of elevator shafts cut it off,” Bucky said. “Even Stark’s, for whatever fucking reason.” This was a utilities elevator, but that didn’t seem like a great excuse. Bucky checked his own phone, anyway, but didn’t have any better luck.

Then he noticed something bulging slightly from Captain America’s pocket, a region he was noticing for entirely inappropriate reasons. Despite that, he decided he needed to mention it, as a Hail Mary. It didn’t seem like Captain America would be terribly offended. “Hey,” Bucky said, “is that a… pager?” Or are you just happy to see me, he didn’t say.

Captain America looked surprised as he glanced down, as though shocked his body was still there. It was a pretty hilarious thing to witness one of the best-looking men Bucky had ever met doing. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. They thought it would be better for me than one of those, you know, blue-toothed ones.” Blue-toothed.

“Is it just for emergencies?”

“Mainly,” Captain America said, before realization dawned. He looked gobsmacked. “I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot at all,” Bucky said. “You’re a genius who’s about to free us from this elevator.”

“I’m an idiot who would’ve been trapped in this elevator until my bones petrified if it weren’t for you,” Captain America responded. Bucky tried not to let his laugh turn into a shriek.

Captain America got ahold of someone whose voice sounded like Pepper Potts’s. At one point, he exclaimed, “well, sure, but I don’t think JARVIS cares much about the utilities workers!” and then apologized. This time, Bucky tried to stifle his laugh altogether, but didn’t do a great job. Captain America gave him something halfway between a tiny smile and a tiny eye roll.

A few minutes later, JARVIS said, “Hello, Captain Rogers, Sergeant. Barnes,” and Bucky said, “thank God,” and Captain America said, “thank God,” and the elevator was moving again, and Bucky whooped softly.

When the elevator came to a stop at the eleventh floor, Captain America turned to Bucky. “This is me,” he said.

Bucky resisted the urge to point out the obviousness of this statement. “Thanks for the rescue, Captain,” he said instead.

“You were much more helpful than I was,” Captain America replied. “I should be thanking you.” He hesitated, then went on, “and you can call me Steve.”

Jesus. “Then thanks, Steve.”

“Thanks, Bucky.”

They watched each other for a moment, awkwardly. The elevator beeped angrily at Captain America—Steve—for holding its doors open. “Well,” he said, “I’ll see you, then.”

“See you,” Bucky said. He tried not to stare as Steve walked away, and almost succeeded. When Steve glanced back, though, he caught Bucky eying him. He smiled slightly, more an acknowledgement than anything else.

More an acknowledgement than anything else: Bucky told himself this and told himself this and told himself this.

+++

Bucky’d been at his desk for fifteen minutes before he realized: there was a reason he was so helplessly attracted to Steve Rogers, or Captain America, or the Most Masculine Man in the Country. He, Bucky, who’d never dated a guy who could walk into a sports bar without getting glared right back out of it. Bucky had never had a problem with going for straight men, because he didn’t like straight men, even as he spent so much of his time trying to walk and talk like one. Straight men were at least half the reason it took Bucky so many shitty years to break up with Olivia. They were what he thought about when he took four shots of vodka stolen from his parents before every party in high school, just to be sure he wouldn’t have to really go to the party at all, not with his whole self intact. And the military hadn’t much improved his opinion of heterosexuals, generally, even if he’d met some of his favorites there. Straight men, by and large, were—Bucky hated himself for feeling this, but had never been able to shake the feeling off—scary. Bucky liked his sex and his fear far, far away from each other.

Steve wasn’t scary. Steve made fun of Bucky’s salad dressing. Steve lived in Bushwick. Steve raised his eyebrows when he smiled. Steve glanced back at Bucky once as he walked away from him.

He was strong enough to kill aliens, and faster than any Olympic athlete, living or dead, and built like the kind of guy who asks everybody at the bar if they’ve got a problem with him. But he wasn’t scary.

And Bucky felt, in the ineffable way these things are sometimes felt, that Steve Rogers, or Captain America, or the Most Masculine Man in the Country, was gay.

Bucky was probably a hopeful idiot. He probably needed to get laid. This was all stupid, probably, and he would probably forget about it by the end of the week.

He made himself open MATLAB, the least erotic software in the universe.

+++

Two days later, Bucky was sitting on his couch with his roommate, half-watching a Youtube video about molecular gastronomy, when his computer dinged with an email.

_from: sgr0029@starkindustries.org_  
_to: jbarnes@starkindustries.org_  
_subject: Bagels/Elevator_

_Dear Bucky,_

_I’m sorry if this is out of line, but I just wanted to thank you for the bagel recommendation. They aren’t inexplicably rainbow, so big step up. I also wanted to thank you for figuring out the elevator situation._

_It’s a little strange you know every detail of my job, but I have no idea what you do. Not that I’d understand it (failed high school algebra twice). But what kinds of projects do you work on?_

_Steve_

 

“What the fuck,” Bucky said.

Leah looked up from her book. “What’s up?”

“Captain America figured out my email.”

“What the fuck?”

“Like I said.” He read the message again to be sure he wasn’t seeing things. Leah, scooting closer to him, did the same.

“Captain America is trying to fuck you,” she said, voice full of awe.

Bucky gave her a dry look. “I’m sure that’s his top priority.”

“Looking forward to seeing you around,” she read, lowering her voice several octaves. She jabbed Bucky in the side. “Bucky. How’d he even know your full name?”

“I don’t know, Leah.” He closed his laptop. “Maybe male friendship was different in the 1930s.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Probably involved more sex.”

“I hate you.” Then he sighed, turning to face her. “What do I say?”

“Well,” she said, “do you want to fuck Captain America?”

“Are you kidding?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You’re a lesbian,” Bucky replied. “And you don’t go for blondes.”

She shrugged. “So?”

“Of course I want to fuck Captain America,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t want to fuck me. He said he doesn’t like rainbow bagels.”

“Neither do you!”

“Yeah, but it’s coded.”

“You are the dumbest man I have ever met,” she said, standing. “Whatever. Tell him you’re happy to help. Tell him you’ll rescue him from an elevator any day. Ask how he feels about pitching.”

“Why do you hate me?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “If Black Widow were thanking me for my bagel advice,” she said, “I wouldn’t hesitate. I would be on that pussy within the hour. I wouldn’t be wasting time being coy.” She took a swig of orange juice from the bottle in the fridge labeled LEAH ONLY. HAS GERMS. “And I don’t get too nervous to even go out for drinks with the thousand depressing Grindr twinks blowing up my phone, so I’d think you’d have more incentive for landing this. But what do I know.”

“Fuck off,” Bucky said without heat. He rubbed his eyes. “You want Ethiopian?”

“I do,” she said.

Bucky didn’t email Steve that night.

+++

He emailed Steve the next morning.

_from: jbarnes@starkindustries.org_  
_to: sgr0029@starkindustries.org_  
_subject: Re: Bagels/Elevator_

_Hey Steve,_

_Any time. I’ve got a running good bagels list going, so let me know if you need any other recommendations._

_You were the one who liberated us from that elevator. Push came to shove, you probably could’ve forced the doors open or whatever, too, which I definitely couldn’t. Basically, you’ve got no reason to be thanking me again, but I do appreciate it._

_I do the grunt work on a lot of prosthetics stuff. Mainly trying to figure out how to make brain-electricity show up as normal-electricity, and then writing really long code about it. I make it sound miserable, but I like it a lot, obviously._

_I don’t really know what you do, actually, other than protecting the earth. I assume most of it’s classified, though._

_Thanks for the email. Good to hear from you._

_Bucky_

Dry, sure, but better than Leah’s suggestion, which was to send him a link to the “what’s your dick like homie what are you into” section of “212.”

Bucky forced himself not to check his email until right before he left for lunch. When he did, he saw a response from Steve:

_from: sgr0029@starkindustries.org_  
_to: jbarnes@starkindustries.org_  
_subject: Re: Re: Bagels/Elevator_

_Bucky,_

_Your job sounds impossibly difficult. But it must help a lot of people. Personally, outside of missions, I mainly argue with Tony/government officials. It’s not much of a full-time job._

_Also, I have a strange question. The only private place I’ve found to smoke close to Stark Tower is by the dumpsters. Do you have any alternate suggestions?_

_I’d love to see this bagels list, too._

_Steve_

Bucky gave up on playing hard to get. He responded on the spot:

_from: jbarnes@starkindustries.org_  
_to: sgr0029@starkindustries.org_  
_subject: Re: Re: Re: Bagels/Elevator_

_Steve,_

_That sounds harrowing. What do you do outside of work? (Sorry to pry, swear I won’t sell any of this to the paps, etc.)_

_Good question about where to smoke. There’s a side entrance that you can wheedle JARVIS into keeping unlocked for you, if you try. (Or just prop it open with your shoe. Which I have never done, of course.) I can show it to you sometime, if you want._

_Bagel list is attached. Knock yourself out._

_Bucky_

 

Almost immediately:

_from: sgr0029@starkindustries.org_  
_to: jbarnes@starkindustries.org_  
_subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bagels/Elevator_

_Bucky,_

_This is a lot of bagels. I am impressed._

_I get out of a meeting at 3 pm… Could I meet you by the broken elevator then? I can tell you what I do outside of work in person, where reporters can’t hack my account._

_Steve_

What the fuck.

**James Barnes**  
captain america wants me to show him a PRIVATE PLACE TO SMOKE in 2 hrs

**Leah Celestin**  
bro.

**James Barnes**  
wtf do i do

**Leah Celestin**  
SHOW HIM WHERE TO SMOKE  
cant believe he smokes smh

**James Barnes**  
OK  
WTF  
WHY IS HE ASKING THIS

**Leah Celestin**  
UMM I ALREDY EXPLAINED TO WHY? BUT U DIDNT LISTEN?

**James Barnes**  
WELL IM LISTENING NOW  
HE CANT MEAN THAT

**Leah Celestin**  
im not typing all caps anymore i hate that iphonr feature  
and i have to grade 200 mf midterms  
fuck captain america a lot  
fuck him super hard  
u r my best friend i believe in u

**James Barnes**  
i have 2 hrs to live and ur leaving me  
god  
bye asshole

**Leah Celestin loved your message.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everybody who responded to the first chapter in any way!
> 
> homophobia is dealt with in this chapter, but it's in very low detail. there is also very frequent smoking of cigarettes and one-time consumption of alcohol.

Captain America smoked Camels. When Bucky ribbed him about it, Steve explained, “they’re the only ones we had back then, too.”

So he fucked up with Captain America—Steve—five seconds after stepping into the nearest alley (which wasn’t hard to find at all, actually) with him. Then Bucky couldn’t get his lighter to work, which counted as another fuckup.

“I can—” Steve gestured vaguely at Bucky with a tiny restaurant matchbook. Jesus Christ.

“Please,” Bucky said around the cigarette in his mouth. He leaned toward Steve, who tore off a match, struck it on his own jacket zipper, and brought it to Bucky’s face. The hand cupped near Bucky’s jaw was calloused and knuckly and long-fingered. Pianist hands, strong and careful. Bucky tried to swallow without letting the cigarette bob between his lips.

He took a drag. “Really?” he said, motioning toward Steve’s zipper. “Did people do that past age 15 way back when?”

Bucky wondered, briefly, whether this was too mean a joke. Steve, who was lighting his own now, laughed hard enough that his match slipped out from between his fingers. So much for careful. “Dammit,” he muttered, bending to pick it up. Bucky stared resolutely at the brick wall behind him. “These strike pads aren’t worth anything. Everyone just uses the naphtha ones now.” When Bucky quirked an eyebrow, he indicated Bucky’s lighter. “I can’t get those to work any better than you can,” Steve said.

“Funny.”

“But at least I don’t smoke menthols.”

Bucky widened his eyes. “You wait until now to mock me? You make me think I’m off scot-free, and then.”

“I admire it,” Steve said. “A compromise between mint and smoke. It’s the more modern way. You have all those two-in-one things.”

“You mean like shampoo and conditioner?” Steve nodded. “Do you use that shit?”

Steve’s brow furrowed. “I use Ivory soap.”

“You’re—how is your hair not straw?”

“What?”

“Soap?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Did they not tell you about twenty-first century hair?”

Now Steve’s eyebrows were raised instead. “Did hair change?”

“Does it look like it?”

“Not at all.”

Bucky realized that he didn’t actually know how to respond to that. “Well,” he said, “you’re supposed to condition.”

“Is that what you do?”

Bucky squinted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

It was basically a joke, but it turned Steve bright red. “I just mean—your hair’s—it’s just longer. Than mine. I mean. I—”

“Relax,” Bucky said. “I’m not offended you acknowledged that we both have hair.”

For some reason, this called to mind, for Bucky, a bald Captain America. What was more horrifying than the image was the fact that it didn’t decrease Bucky’s attraction at all.

Steve, still red, gave Bucky a small smile. “Okay,” he said.

“I’d be offended if you implied my hair didn’t look better than yours, though.”

“Well, your hair does look better than mine.”

Bucky blinked. Steve wasn’t looking at him. He held his cigarette like a joint, between his thumb and index finger, palm cupped around it. Bucky remembered the pictures of him from the Battle of New York, action-figure pristine even when he was fighting. He looked nothing like that now. Bucky wondered whether somebody had doctored those pictures. They had motive to, maybe; maybe some people didn’t want a Captain America like this.

Unfortunately for Bucky, he wanted a Captain America like this pretty badly.

+++

Steve Rogers preferred Klee to Picasso, Akzidenz-Grotesk to Gill Sans, and Miss Marple to Poirot. In his free time, he drew, read, and googled names he didn’t recognize. He also loved period dramas, which Bucky found insane. “Doesn’t Mad Men just seem crazy unrealistic to you, though?” he asked.

“I wasn’t around in the sixties any more than you were,” Steve pointed out, a little testily. “I’ve got nothing to compare it to.” He paused. “I don’t feel good about it politically, though.”

It turned out that Steve Rogers was also a manifesto-thumping communist. “Actually, I grew up more of an anarchist,” he corrected Bucky. “I saw Emma Goldman speak once.” His eyes went all distant and wistful. “But with the war and all, those kinds of subtleties pretty much fell away.”

“Captain America saw Emma Goldman speak.”

“I don’t know about that,” Steve said. “I was still 120 pounds soaking wet and bundled up back then. Steve Rogers definitely did, though.”

“Fair enough,” Bucky replied.

+++

“He’s so into you,” Leah said. “I hate you. He is so into you.”

“He’s Captain America.”

“And he’s into you.” Leah was standing in front of the coffee table, gesticulating wildly. “Your hair does look better than mine? Is this a thing people say?”

“I—”

“Is it?”

“I don’t think he even knows anyone else,” Bucky said. “Not in New York, at least. He’s trying to get a guy he met in a broken elevator to take smoke breaks with him. That is next-level loneliness shit.”

“It is next-level loneliness-thirst combination shit.” She pointed at him. “ _Your hair looks better than mine_. And he blushed.”

“Of course he blushes. He’s Captain America.”

“Oh, of course,” she said, and stomped into her room. “Of course,” she called. “Of course he blushes, of course he’s I don’t know what but definitely something, of course he’s trying to fuck you. Why can’t you make that jump?”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m a fucking mathematician,” Leah said, waving around a thick manila folder with TOPOLOGY scrawled across it in bright red marker. “I always make sense.” Then she glanced at the folder’s label. “Just pretend I’m making a joke about how he’s going to top here.”

“Leave me alone,” Bucky said.

He could feel Leah glaring at him for a moment, but didn’t do anything about it. He pretended to be interested in several screenshots of conversations with their mom that his sister had just sent him, captioned “GET ME OUT OF H E R E.” The texts screenshotted were mainly about laundry. Bucky had a lot of problems with his mom, but her thing about folding seemed pretty reasonable.

“I’m only leaving you alone for now because I have to grade until 4 am tonight,” she said finally. She kicked him in the shin. “Look at me.”

He cut his eyes to her. “Why are you a bully in an after-school special all the time?”

She ignored him. “I will harass you until you make a move.”

“I’ll move out.”

“Aw,” she said, and settled against his side. “Coming out was so hard for you the first time around. I’m glad it’s gotten easier.”

Bucky just sighed.

+++

That Friday, at 3 pm, Bucky decided he needed a smoke. He didn’t spend any time trying to convince himself that that was his actual reason for taking a smoke break at 3 pm on Friday, because he knew it wouldn’t work. 3 pm on Friday was exactly when Steve had said his next meeting at Stark Industries would end, after all.

Steve Rogers looked beautiful, unaccountably miserable, and completely unaware of his surroundings. Bucky made sure he was in Steve’s sightlines as he approached, careful not to startle him.

“Hey,” Bucky said, trying for nonchalant.

He faltered when Steve beamed, his face transformed from a mask of stoically-borne horror to a grin that somehow made his eyes look bluer. “Hey,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”

Bucky nodded, realized it was probably rude to just nod, blurted out “you too,” and had to concentrate very hard in order to keep his hands steady as he—not Steve, this time—lit his cigarette. He inhaled too fast, nearly coughing.

After a moment of silence, Steve said, “well, how are you?” just as Bucky started, “so, what’s up?”

Bucky burst out laughing, and Steve followed.

“You go,” Bucky said, between slightly hysterical giggles.

“No, you.”

“I swear to god.”

“Okay, fine. I’m fine.” Steve was smiling broadly again, but shyer this time. His eyelashes were heavily involved. Bucky wanted to be swallowed whole by the sidewalk, never to return. “The usual.”

“Yeah, just using your superstrength as a force against evil, nothing to report.”

“Exactly,” Steve said. “No, I’m just…” He hesitated the way loudmouths always did before they broke their NDAs.

Bucky swooped in, as he had become accustomed to doing, and interrupted Steve before he could tell Bucky whatever confidential information was about to get them both fired. “Meetings?”

Steve looked a little relieved not to have to lose his job and livelihood. “Endlessly,” he said. “Though that’s a normal part of almost everybody’s life. I was just lucky before.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow, but assumed they weren’t nearly close enough for him to chastise Steve for over-sympathizing with white-collar workers just because they weren’t precisely him. Instead of saying all that, he made a hmm sound, and said, “still blows.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. Then he gestured at Bucky. “Now you go.”

“Okay. Um.” Bucky wracked his brain. What had he done in the last three days? Other than thinking about Steve and yelling about Steve and being yelled at about Steve. “Prosthetic thumbs are a bitch,” he said. “Definitely the worst part.”

Steve’s eyes didn’t flick to Bucky’s prosthetic, which didn’t embarrass Bucky as much as Steve looking at the prosthetic would have, but which still embarrassed him. You can’t really win. “More than the other fingers?” Steve asked evenly.

“Definitely,” Bucky said. “The metacarpal fucks it up.” He was about to apologize for dropping a five-dollar word like he was Neil deGrasse Tyson or something, but Steve was nodding. Of course Steve knew what metacarpals were—he’d been an artist who went on to lead a special ops unit with no formally assigned medic. He probably also had a unique and original proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem prepared, just in case it ever came up. Or played clarinet incredibly well. Or both.

They shot the shit about medical technology for awhile, then went back inside. Bucky tried to concentrate on his and failed pretty spectacularly. If this Captain America thing was killing enough of his brain cells to make him measurably worse at engineering, Bucky would probably never forgive himself.

On the other hand: Steve lighting Bucky’s cigarette.

It seemed, to some part of Bucky’s indefensible lizard brain, a fair trade-off.

+++

Steve was out there on Monday, too. And on Thursday. And on Friday. Tuesday and Friday of the next week, too. Every time, he and Bucky talked as they smoked.

Bucky learned, in greater detail, about Steve’s Agatha Christie preferences and Mad Men opinions, his beefs with various fonts and artists, his resolute but very self-contained Catholicism, and, gradually but surely, the cacophonous depression that resulted from being Captain America. Steve’s friends were the Falcon, the Black Widow, and his elderly ex-girlfriend (?). His hobbies all involved running alone, drawing alone, reading alone, watching TV alone, or some combination thereof.

Steve wore many different pairs of cheap slacks and boring shirts. He seemed to have just one fall coat, a dark leather jacket that Steve’s biceps sort of strained against. He also learned about Bucky, though nothing really interesting: Bucky clarified that, yes, his now-metal arm was courtesy of the Iraq War, his job was courtesy of an engineering degree and Tony Stark’s towering savior complex, and his apartment was shared with Leah. “My roommate,” he told Steve, who raised an eyebrow.

“No, seriously,” Bucky said. “She’s been my best friend since we were 15. Post-doc at NYU in crazy math. Way too good for my ass.” When Steve’s eyebrow didn’t go down, Bucky told him, “and I’m definitely not interested,” trying very hard not to let his voice do anything weird. Steve’s face calmed down after that, but he didn’t really say anything in response.

So: they talked. They were talking. Bucky and Captain America were—something. Two out of maybe five moderate smokers employed by Stark Industries, for one thing. Acquaintances who had learned enough about each other to have a pretty good traffic in jabs and verbal spars going. Probably, by most metrics, they were friends.

On the days Steve didn’t show up, Bucky smoked in the alley alone, trying to pretend it wasn’t 3 pm sharp. He told himself there wasn’t anything particularly pathetic about this, because he’d be smoking there even if Steve hadn’t been in that damn elevator. He probably wouldn’t be taking his breaks on a distractingly rigid schedule, but that was beside the point. Kind of. He wished it were.

About two weeks after they met (not that Bucky was counting), as Bucky was stubbing out his cigarette, Steve cleared his throat and said, “hey, I’m—well, I don’t really know the etiquette now, but I assume it would be better for me to text you than email you?”

It took a second for Bucky to realize that Captain America was asking for his number.

“Oh, yeah,” Bucky said stupidly. “I mean, sure. Should I—I can put it in your phone now, if you want.”

Steve patted his pockets like a middle-aged golfer. He grimaced. “Don’t have it on me.”

Of course he didn’t. “Okay,” Bucky said, “do you want to give me yours, and I’ll text you?”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Steve said, then added, nonsensically, “thanks. Sorry.”

Bucky ignored him and handed over his phone. When Steve finished painstakingly entering and checking his number, he passed it back to Bucky. Their hands brushed.

It was saved under “Steve Rogers,” with the company set to “SHIELD.” Bucky had to violently suppress the urge to coo.

+++

“He gave you his number.”

“Don’t start,” Bucky said, trying to squeeze as much of his body into the refrigerator as possible. Just for the protection from Leah’s glare.

+++

 **James Barnes**  
hi this is bucky from the elevator  
menthols bucky if you will

 **Steve Rogers**  
Hello

**Steve Rogers sent you an image.**

**James Barnes**  
you can’t google conditioner but you can find a picture of kools which isn’t even my brand

 **Steve Rogers**  
Yes I have priorities

 **James Barnes**  
did u just google “menthols”

 **Steve Rogers**  
I wouldn’t dignify them with anything else

+++

Leah hadn’t been wrong. Or: she was, but the problem was with her conclusions, mostly, not her raw data.

It was true that Steve Rogers was, or seemed to be, almost completely alone in this world. It was true that Steve was talking to Bucky without any good reason to do so. It was also true, probably, that he was doing this in an attempt to fill the complete-aloneness void.

It was true that Steve Rogers was attractive enough for it to become a running joke in every US history classroom since he went into the ice. It was true that Bucky was not immune to his charms. It was true that these charms seemed to affect Bucky more intensely than they did the general population, by several orders of magnitude. It was true that Bucky thought Steve was also disarmingly funny and intelligent and weird in the most beautiful, primal-instinct-triggering way possible. It was true that all of this meant Bucky was pretty much screwed in any conversation with Steve.

It was even likely—Bucky could concede this—that the issues of Steve’s loneliness and his attractiveness, or people’s responses to it, were entwined. Steve Rogers, for one thing, seemed less straight the longer he spent doing nothing to prove his straightness. Also, the longer he spent asking Bucky, who cared alarmingly little about whether he himself was a homosexual in Captain America’s eyes, to email him and smoke with him and text him and let his cigarette be lit by him. So: he was flirting. Mildly, of course—flirting with about the intensity of a person flirting with customers to get a bigger tip. It was, however, flirting. (Probably.)

But here was Leah’s leap: that this had broader implications for how Steve really felt about Bucky, specifically. And that those feelings, if they did exist—which they didn’t—were at all merited.

Steve was gay enough, at least, to not be offended by Bucky’s pretty obvious interest. He liked it, even. But that was a far cry from liking Bucky—Bucky whom he barely knew, whose resting face resembled (he was told) that of a Russian hitman with a bad headache, who was good-looking but not the kind of good-looking that convinces anyone that the person they’re looking at has anything to recommend themself outside of facial symmetry and reasonably broad shoulders. Steve glowed like his insides were even better than his outside, like he had an inextinguishable internal light or whatever the fuck. Bucky looked like he’d needed plastic surgery to look like himself. Like all of his flesh, not just his arm, had something artificial and dead about it.

Not that Steve even knew Bucky’s former self; not that Bucky acted fucked-up enough for Steve to know Bucky had a former- and latter-self at all. But Bucky was fucked-up, and his life was split in two, and he was a shit boyfriend and only OK at sex, even with people he was actually attracted to. (Most of the sex he had ever had had been with people he was not actually attracted to.) Bucky cried more frequently than even the most melodramatic telenovela star, and about issues of significantly less consequence. He thought The Sopranos, as well as most other Important Masculinity Media, was both boring and terrifically upsetting. Even his best friend was out of his league—Leah could do multivariable in her head without serious effort, was the funniest person Bucky had ever met, never hesitated when she was ordering at a coffee shop, and was probably moving out on Bucky the second she got either a suitable girlfriend or a tenure-track offer, whichever happened first. (And both would happen, soon.) Bucky was not equipped to date Captain America.

He was equipped to provide Captain America with—what? Flirting practice, an easy venue for getting back into the swing of things? A symbol of the twenty-first century’s nominal acceptance of whatever it was they were skirting around (even if it was with a very, very wide berth)? Just someone to be seen by, heard by, liked by? Whatever it was, Bucky could probably do it.

But he couldn’t give any more than that. Even if he could, he knew, deep-down, that Steve would never, ever want it.

+++

Bucky couldn’t give any more than that, but that didn’t stop him, idiot that he was, from asking Steve for drinks.

They’d met in September; it was early November, now, and Steve, apparently, hadn’t done anything for Halloween. “Are you kidding?” Bucky asked.

“I gave out candy,” Steve said defensively. “What else was I going to do?”

“Go out?” When Steve stared at him blankly, Bucky threw his hands in the air, nearly losing his cigarette in the process. “You’re 28, dude.”

“Sam’s in DC,” Steve said, “and Natasha was doing… I don’t know what. Don’t really want to.”

This was probably fair: it seemed like Black Widow wouldn’t be great company on a holiday when terrifying your friends was not only acceptable, but encouraged. “That’s still depressing,” Bucky said, and then continued, before he could stop himself, “we could go out, if you wanted.” He winced, then tried to play it off as a cough. “I mean, we could get drinks. After,” and he made a gesture that conveyed either the whole of New York City or work.

Steve was staring at Bucky with a completely illegible expression.

“Do you not drink?” Bucky tried, suddenly mortified. Maybe Captain America was sober. Maybe he thought alcohol was evil. Maybe—

“No, no, I do,” Steve said, his face going back to normal, pleasant if a little bemused. “Doesn’t do much, but—yeah. I’d love to go to a bar.”

“Okay,” Bucky said, then had a heart palpitation, then added, “great.”

Steve smiled, still looking the way he did when Bucky tried to explain the Gauss algorithm to him. “Where?”

“There’s a place by my apartment,” Bucky said. “Unless you’ve got somewhere you’d rather go?”

“I haven’t enjoyed a bar since 1941,” Steve said. “I mean—I don’t mean that badly. But I don’t know anywhere bearable, I guess.”

It hadn’t been this awkward between them since they’d started this whole routine. “Well, this place ranks bearable for me,” Bucky said. “And I’ve got pretty high standards. On that count, at least. Here, I—” Impulsively, he fished the newly-empty cigarette carton out of his pocket and started to rip it at the seams. As he uncapped a ballpoint from his pocket, he asked Steve, “okay if I write the address down?”

Now Steve looked annoyed, which was much more normal. “I can work a phone now,” he said. “No matter how badly you think I text.”

“You text like shit,” Bucky said, which was true. It wasn’t that they texted much—a “sick today not gna be there sry” from Bucky here, an “I’m out of town until Thursday see you?” from Steve there. But Steve punctuated haphazardly, allowed his phone to autocorrect “Bucky” to anything it pleased, and seemed to check his phone once a day, at most. Not that Bucky minded any of this terribly, but that was Bucky’s fault. “But it’s nothing to do with you texting,” Bucky said. “If you really want me to believe you’re from Brooklyn, you should be able to find this without GPS.”

A smirk spread slowly across Steve’s face. “Huh,” he said. “That a challenge?”

“You got it?”

“Well, I accept.”

That was how Steve ended up with a torn-up Marlboro pack with “Atlantic + Vanderbilt (take 5 from ST)” scrawled on it in his pocket. It was also how Bucky ended up waiting for Steve at a slightly sticky bar, playing sudoku at expert level on his phone, trying not to hyperventilate.

Steve showed up a few terrifying minutes late. “I’m really sorry,” he said.

“Get lost?” Bucky asked. “Needed your phone to navigate, after all?”

“Ha ha,” Steve said, sliding onto the stool beside Bucky. “Of course not. I was using my superstrength as a force against evil.” He said this quietly, though it didn’t seem necessary: Steve blended in shockingly well as a civilian. He had a baseball cap tugged low, his shoulders slumped in a way they never were when he and Bucky were alone. He looked, more or less, like a normal guy, albeit an outrageously hot one.

“Can’t fault you for that,” Bucky conceded, flagging down the bartender. “I’ll do a pint of Samuel Adams,” he said, and nodded at Steve.

“Uh,” Steve said, “I’ll have the same.”

Bucky tried to get his wallet out, but Steve stopped him. “I got this,” Steve said.

“Come on,” Bucky said. “I asked, I’ll pay.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Bucky replied, rolling his eyes. “Fine. Let’s just go Dutch.”

Something weird flashed across Steve’s face again, that I-can’t-do-math expression, but he nodded. They each paid the long-suffering bartender, then found a table.

+++

They were both four drinks in—Steve seeming to feel nothing, Bucky indisputably feeling something—when Steve told Bucky, “I was with someone. Before the war.” He paused. “His name was Patrick.”

Bucky tried to control his reaction. “Yeah?” he ventured.

“Yeah.” Steve cleared his throat. “I figured you had guessed—about me, I mean. That you knew.”

“Not about—I mean, I didn’t know,” Bucky said. “Definitely didn’t know you were with someone.” Bucky didn’t add that he had hoped, more than known. Or that Steve’s biggest tell had been the way he said oh my god, which definitely didn’t count as scientific method.

Steve exhaled quietly, half-smiling. It made him look sadder. Cautiously, Bucky asked, “are you… in touch?”

“He died before I came back,” Steve said. “Moved to Jersey after the war, got married. He called it off when I kept trying to enlist, anyway.” There was that half-smile again. “Said it was like living with a walking death wish.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Steve shrugged. “Could be a lot worse,” he said.

“Sounds pretty bad.”

That made Steve roll his eyes. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“I’m just saying, I’m not gonna judge you for being sad your ex-boyfriend died.”

“Okay,” Steve said shortly. Then he scrubbed a hand across his face. “Sorry. I appreciate it.”

After a minute, Bucky said, awkwardly, “I am too, you know.” When Steve gave him a blank look, he said, “I mean, gay. I’m gay.”

“I had an inkling,” Steve said drily.

“Hey.”

“What?” Steve was raising his eyebrows. “I’m the 95-year-old. I get to be the ashamed one. Not you. Anyway,” he said, “it was mainly that I liked you. Not, I don’t know, anything stereotypical. Just—you’re smart.”

“Yeah, well,” Bucky said, baffled by the second part of that statement and thus ignoring it, “you’re 95, but you’re also on a thousand Top Ten Bravest American War Heroes lists.”

“Those exist?”

“On the Republican versions of Buzzfeed. I’m not kidding.” He pointed at Steve. “Anyway, I’m saying you’re brave.”

Steve laughed softly, grimly. He stared at his beer. “I haven’t—since 1940. With anyone. How’s that for brave.”

“You mean…” Bucky caught Steve’s eye. “You haven’t had sex since 1940?”

“When would I be having sex?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “I guess—but—you,” and he gestured vaguely at Steve’s face. (He was starting to realize that he was drunk.)

“Me?”

“Fuck off. You know what I mean.”

“I don’t, actually,” Steve said. “Tell me more about this.”

“You know what other lists you’re on,” he said, and buried his head in his hands when Steve started to laugh.

“‘Craziest Secular Resurrections’?” Steve asked. “‘Dumbest Fights in Brooklyn History’? ‘Irish Catholic Homosexuals to Watch’?”

“You’re such a shit,” Bucky said. After a moment, he said, “the last one’s closest, I guess.”

Steve laughed. When Bucky lifted his head, Steve was looking at him warmly. Bucky’s throat contracted.

They left the bar soon after. It was cold out, suddenly, and Bucky couldn’t help shivering.

Steve glanced at him. “You want my jacket?”

“We’re not at the sock hop. Or whatever you people had. Speakeasy.”

“Nobody was lending anyone their jacket at speakeasies,” Steve said. “Anyway, prohibition ended when I was fifteen.” He cleared his throat. “Though…”

“What?”

“I worked at a queer bar,” he said quickly. “I mean, I was a bartender.”

Bucky stopped in his tracks to stare at Steve. “What?” Steve asked, fidgeting a little.

“Holy shit,” Bucky said. “You—that is dope.” Steve blinked. “I mean, amazing,” Bucky amended. “Crazy. Insane. Holy shit.”

“You know, those still exist.”

“Okay, asshole, but that’s—” He thought for a second about what was too potentially traumatic to bring up and what wasn’t. “Was it fun?” he finally asked, feebly.

“If forcing guys to wash off their makeup and sober up before they go home to their wives is what you call fun, then yeah.” But Steve smiled, soft. “It… yes. It was nice.”

Steve wasn’t just gay, back then; he’d been around gay people all the time, before. Now—who was he even out to, other than Bucky?

“Sam, Natasha,” Steve said, somewhat thickly. Bucky realized he’d voiced that question, which was definitely too traumatic to bring up. Damn it. “Nobody else is—well. It just doesn’t really matter anymore.”

Bucky blinked. “Matter?”

Steve curved his lips upward, a strained approximation of a smile. “Captain America isn’t a fairy,” he told Bucky. “Just me.”

Before Bucky came out, he used to tell himself: if nobody knows and you can handle it alone, it doesn’t matter whether it’s true.

Bucky decided that for himself. Steve, on the other hand, had it handed by him by a job he couldn’t really get out of. And it sounded like Steve had never handled it alone, or felt the need to do so. Even when the consequences for him were higher than they’d ever been for Bucky.

Bucky didn’t think there was anything really wrong with how he’d dealt with his sexuality, outside of things with Olivia. But he knew it wasn’t a particularly brave course of action, either. Steve had chosen the bravest course of action he could find, then had it taken away from him, no questions asked.

“That sucks,” Bucky told Steve, finally, and Steve glanced at him with a warmth that nearly made Bucky stumble.

When they arrived at Bucky’s building, he realized that Steve’s jacket had made its way onto his shoulders. He shrugged it off. “You’re impossible,” he said, handing it to Steve.

Steve took it and hummed. Then they stood for a second, just looking at each other. Bucky thought, for a mortally terrifying instant, that he was going to abandon whatever shreds of common sense remained in his brain and close the distance between them.

“Well, I’m gonna go upstairs,” Bucky said instead. “Thanks for—I mean, you really didn’t have to walk me, you know. I’m six-foot.”

Steve raised his eyebrow. “The serum makes me better at estimating length, you know.”

Don’t make a joke about length. “Five-eleven, asshole, and I work out, so you can go to Hell.”

Steve grinned. “I’ll see you,” he started, and his smile dimmed. “I’m going to be in DC for a few weeks.”

“Oh,” Bucky said, pathetically. He tried to repair the lapse by brightly telling Steve, “so you really will be in hell.”

Steve gave him the world’s lightest shove, a shove only a person exceptionally aware of their own strength would give. “Bye, Bucky,” he said, still close.

Were they going to hug? Instead of making a real decision, Bucky leaned in slightly, bumped their shoulders together. A compromise. “Have fun,” he replied lamely, dizzy with cold and drink and the stubble that he’d never noticed on Steve’s jaw before. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’m leaving all the stupid here,” Steve said, and he walked away. This time, he was the one who glanced back. Bucky, who hadn’t moved an inch, couldn’t even make himself pretend he hadn’t been watching his broad receding figure.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone who has read, you are great! this is a short one. an interlude, if you will.
> 
> the f slur is used in an offhand manner at one point in this chapter. there's no malice behind it, and it's not directed at anyone. if you want to skip it just don’t read the paragraph that starts “He rolled his eyes, then felt himself turning red.” also, there’s discussion of war/violence/the aftermath thereof, and of certain drugs. and bucky barnes just being kind of an asshole generally (♥︎).

“You were right,” Bucky told Leah the next morning. It was almost noon, and he had just emerged, unaccountably hungover, from his room.

“I was,” Leah agreed. She was sitting, cross-legged, on the floor, papers and textbooks spread out in a closed circle around her. “About what, exactly?” she asked without looking up from her calculator.

Because Leah was Bucky’s platonic soulmate, there was a pot of coffee already brewed. As he poured himself a cup, he said, “about Captain America.”

In his peripheral vision, he saw Leah’s head snap up. “You fucked Captain America?” she shrieked. Or did her version of shrieking, which was her usual monotone, just louder.

“No,” Bucky said. “Not about—whatever, how he feels. About me.”

She was staring at him incredulously. “You’re just now discovering you want to fuck him?”

Bucky sipped his coffee, leaning back. “I’m just now discovering I am in way the hell over my head with him,” he said. When Leah’s expression didn’t change, he went on, “I mean, I _like_ him, Leah. 

“Yeah,” Leah said, “we definitely already covered that.”

“No,” Bucky said. “I mean, I—you know.”

“I don’t.”

“I, like.” Bucky put his coffee down and braced his arms on the counter. “I’m maybe twenty hours of time together away from being in love with Captain America.”

Now Leah’s expression really, really changed. “So you didn’t fuck him.”

“Nope.” Bucky decided to have cereal, even though he was trying to go into ketosis or whatever. Desperate times. “Not even a little bit. He told me about his ex and the gay bar he used to work at and how shitty his life is. Pretty much the opposite of sex.”

“He’s gay!”

“Yeah.”

Leah scrutinized him. “You aren’t excited about that at all.”

“Anderson Cooper’s gay, too,” Bucky said. “You see Anderson Cooper going for me?”

She wrinkled her nose. “You’re such a grave-robber.”

“He’s not as old as Steve.” Bucky laughed mirthlessly. “He’s half Steve’s age.”

“You count when he was frozen?”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. The point is, it really doesn’t help my chances.” Then he looked at Leah, serious, wanting her to understand. “He’s an incredible person. And I’m not talking about the Captain America shit. Like—you know he used to be an artist? Still is?”

“You’ve said.”

“No, but look. I made him text me one of his paintings.” He pulled it up on his phone, confident that _don’t show this to anyone else_ carried a best friends/emotional duress exception, and handed it over to Leah.

The painting was of a battlefield that stretched to the horizon, bodies strewn across it densely. Blood slicked the ground, but it had all been done with a gold cast over the red. “Gold leaf its expensive but better than mtlc paints,” Steve had texted Bucky. Gold leaf, like this was a manuscript, a holy text.

It was a painful picture to look at, but it didn’t seem gory, particularly. Neither did watching people die en masse like that. There was something sterilely cruel about it, even in the midst of all those insides turned out. Sterilely cruel: Steve had said this was who a lot of Catholics quietly believed God was, and that he disagreed. “Humans care more about cleanliness than He does,” he told Bucky. “It’s what makes us do evil. He’s more tolerant. At least, that’s what I think.” So it was God who swooped in on the blood, the mess, and made it His.

Bucky told Steve that the God he’d grown up with was written G-d when your grandma was looking, and that He was justice, honesty, the core truth of things. “So is blood,” Steve said. And he was right.

“Fuck,” Leah said slowly. She blinked at the screen. “Okay. Yeah. See what you mean.”

“Uh-huh.” Bucky retrieved his phone and went back to the bowl of knock-off Cinnamon Toast Crunch he’d poured himself.

“But—” Leah looked a little dazed. She’d never fought a war, but she was an army brat, moved to Fort Hamilton by her parents in early high school. Her dad had lost part of both his legs to shrapnel. Her mom was an engineer.

Leah’s mom was most of why Bucky enlisted, but he didn’t hate her for it. They used to sit at Leah’s kitchen table while Leah was showering after soccer practice, Bucky asking questions about weapon design that she always tried to answer, even when there was definitely classified information involved.

Leah wasn’t a touchy-feely person, even at 16, but once, drunk, she told Bucky, “it’s weird to be the kid of two people who’ve killed. Like, people who’ve killed a _lot_. If they weren’t around, and I wasn’t around, there would be more people alive today.”

Of course, there was the _kill to protect_ party line. But Bucky didn’t parrot it to her, because he cared about her too much for that. He just gave her a very slow and cautious hug.

“But,” Leah said, “this means you should date him.” She pointed. “He _gets it,_ Bucky. You know how rare that is.”

He looked at her for a second. “I know you’re a light sleeper, Leah,” he said finally.

Leah tightened her jaw. “That’s the whole point. You think you’re the only one with night terrors? Listen.” She stepped gingerly over a stack of proofs, came to stand by Bucky. Not touching, but there. “If you hold out for a guy you think you deserve, you’re not gonna end up with anyone. Not anyone you like. You know that’s true,” she said, raising her voice when Bucky tried to cut in. “I’m telling you I’ve watched you projectile-vomiting, wearing nothing but boxer briefs with holes in them, and I still like you. I still—love you, okay?” She sounded sort of choked, not with tears but with emotional constipation, but it still came out. It was nice to hear. “And I’m not getting sex out of this.”

Bucky laughed. “Fair point,” he said. “Though I don’t think I was at peak sexual form then, anyway.”

“When are you, though?” She elbowed him gently. “I’m not trying to convince you of this anymore. But I think Captain America would be lucky.”

“Black Widow would be lucky, too,” Bucky said. “I mean, if you’d gotten stuck in an elevator with her.”

Now she elbowed him hard in the ribs. “Fuck off. My department chair’s my girlfriend now.”

“Your department chair’s a guy with a white goatee,” Bucky replied. Leah flipped him off as she poured herself a bowl of cereal. They ate at the counter in companionable silence.

+++

Bucky’d thought it would take twenty more hours of time together for him to fall in love with Captain America, but it turned out that absence was having a similar effect. The next week, he seriously considered quitting smoking, just so he wouldn’t have to endure the Pavlovian excitement-lust response going for a break had on him now. He didn’t end up quitting, because his bodily autonomy issues overrode most things, including this, and also because withdrawal was a bitch. But it was a near thing.

“What’s wrong?” Elliott, the guy in the cubicle next to Bucky’s, asked. He did something with synthetic skin and had two cute kids. “It looks like a Russian hitman with a bad headache just missed his target.”

“I did not miss my target, thanks,” Bucky said. He kind of did look it, though. His glare’s reflection was making even him nervous.

It didn’t seem like anyone had figured out he was friends with Captain America. If they had, they were keeping their mouths shut. And his enormous crush on Steve wasn’t exactly a natural leap: Bucky kept his private life private and wore a different Under Armour shirt every casual Friday. He was not, in other words, the kind of guy the Elliotts of the world singled out as a potential Captain America groupie.

“Landlord won’t fix our radiator,” he said. “It’s the goddamn tundra every night.”

“Welcome to marriage,” Elliott said. Bucky decided that this was the end of their conversation. 

+++

**James Barnes**

hows DC

 

**Steve Rogers**

Sorry not to reply earlier DC is DC but good to see sam

How are you

 

**James Barnes**

not too bad

whats with “welcome to marriage” in response to any misfortune

was that a thing in the 30s also

 

**Steve Rogers**

Yeah they’ve always liked that one

Do gays say it too now

 

**James Barnes**

1\. gays is a weird word but u should keep using it because it’s funny

2\. i dont think so but have u heard of masc4masc i think maybe that crowd does

 

**Steve Rogers**

I regret looking that up

It seems up your alley

 

**James Barnes**

you dont know my life rogers

+++

Bucky was halfway down the stairs into the subway when Black Widow called his name. “James Barnes,” she said. “Who goes by Bucky. Hi.”

She was standing on the sidewalk above him, leaning far over the railing. He gaped at her.

“Where to?” she asked.

Bucky sighed. “Nowhere,” he said, and climbed back up the stairs.

Black Widow was very, very short in person. She was also one of the more physically intimidating people Bucky had ever met. He found himself shrinking away as she led him to a coffee shop. Some Eurotrash place with lots of tile. “I’ve got it,” she said when he tried to order. “Two cappuccinos. Make one a quad-shot.”

It was _6 pm_ , but Black Widow’s caffeine habits probably shouldn’t have surprised Bucky. She probably didn’t sleep. He’d assumed it was coke that kept her going; Steve had implied that, for a lot of the Avengers, it was coke. Coke didn’t do anything to Steve. “Used to, though,” he had told Bucky, and shuddered. Steve was too high-strung for stimulants.

She carried their cups to the table. “So,” she said, sliding the cappuccino-for-human-beings over to Bucky. “I hear we’re mutual friends.”

“Are you going to have me assassinated?” Bucky asked. “Can you just tell me now, so I can say goodbye to my family?”

“Probably not. Depends.” She sipped her drink. “He never smokes with me,” she added.

“He said you’re quitting.”

“I am.” She sighed. “His goddamn regenerative lung capacity. I’m not interested in my lifespan,” she clarified. “Just my ability to sprint.”

“Seems like you sprint pretty well.”

She smiled slightly. “I know trees well enough to avoid climbing up the wrong ones, Barnes,” she said. “Especially ones I wouldn’t have any interest in climbing.”

“Ouch.”

“Don’t take it so personally. _I’m_ not taking it personally from _you_.”

“Oh,” Bucky said. Was it ethical to tell Leah that Black Widow was maybe gay? No less ethical than telling her that Steve was definitely gay. “Sorry. That was already a really shitty joke, but now it’s worse.”

Black Widow laughed at him. “I can see why Steve likes you so much,” she said. “Almost.”

He rolled his eyes, then felt himself turning red. A flushed eye-roll was even worse than a normal flush, so he gave up. “It’s not every Stark-employed veteran you can make fag jokes with, I guess.”

“If he wanted another, he would find one,” Black Widow said.

“What’s that mean?" 

“Absolutely nothing. Drink your coffee.” He did as he was told, but didn’t quit looking at her imploringly. “I’m not telling you whatever it is you want to hear,” she continued after a minute.

“But?”

“But,” she said, “I’ll tell you one thing. Whoever you’re trying to protect, it’s not working. Yes, nothing’s happened yet. But you know those people who talk about straightforwardness?”

“I’m surprised you’re on their side.”

“I’m usually not,” she conceded. “But Steve is. And I think you want to be on his team here.”

They stared at each other for a moment. “So, if I break his heart, you’ll break my face.”

“Exactly." 

“I don’t think I’ve got as much power over his heart as you think I do.”

“I’m a very skilled spy,” she said, pushing out of her chair, “and don’t have much of a horse in this race. I would trust my instincts over yours." 

It took awhile after the door banged shut behind her for Bucky to leave his seat.

+++

Bucky didn’t end up telling Leah that Black Widow was maybe gay. He didn’t tell her anything at all about Black Widow. Instead, he made himself look at Olivia’s Facebook until he had a bad suppressed-tears headache. He was thinking that he could absorb the post-mortem of their relationship through osmosis, but there were two problems with this plan. One: he really couldn’t. Two: even if he could, it wouldn’t help. He knew what he’d done wrong—it was pretty straightforward. Also, he’d never once felt about her the way he already did about Steve. That was sort of what he’d done wrong with her.

 

**Steve Rogers**

Back on Wednesday

 

**James Barnes**

see u then

 

Could he pay a group of Brooklyn-based out guys to talk to Steve, just to see if Steve interacted with them the way he did with Bucky? Could he hire him other _friends_ and see what happened? If Steve remembered who Bucky was? If he was still draping his jacket across Bucky’s shoulders, leaning into Bucky’s space, being his ridiculous self for an audience of Bucky alone?

Even if Bucky could test all that, he wouldn’t feel great about proceeding. See: Olivia. See: the staggering number of guys he’d never texted back. See: his entire life.

Bucky either had to give it a shot, or he didn’t. He decided to wait and see.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS AGAIN ALL
> 
> this chapter: war (+related trauma) mentions, alcohol, continued tacit endorsement of the (extremely evil) tobacco industry. also it is very obvious here that i am watching mad men avidly, sorry about that

On a freezing Monday in early December, leaning against their alley’s brick wall, Bucky saw Steve for the first time in almost three weeks.

They hugged.

For half a second, it was unclear which of them was leaning in, or if they both were, but then Steve was right there, hands on Bucky’s back, voice in Bucky’s ear, telling him, “God, it’s good to see you.” Bucky felt Steve’s warm breath, his slow heartbeat. Bucky felt a lot.

“Hey,” Bucky said, more roughly than he’d intended. “Hey, Steve.”

When they separated, it wasn’t by much. Steve’s nose was pink in the cold, his lips a little chapped. Jesus Christ, but he was _beautiful_. Had Bucky forgotten? He must have.

“Miss me?” Steve asked.

“Not at all,” Bucky said. “Got some goddamn peace and quiet out here, finally. You make a racket, you know that?”

“I’ve heard.”

“Democracy Now! this, Jacob Lawrence that. Spitting out a new thinkpiece every time I come out here to _relax_. You ever considered just writing a column?” Bucky paused, cocked his head to the side. “That’s actually not a bad idea.”

“I’m a terrible writer,” Steve said. “Very abrupt.”

“It could be a very abrupt column. Give them the full Steve Rogers experience.”

“Not everybody wants that.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Bucky said, and didn’t even care that he was showing his whole entire hand. He grinned at Steve, helpless to it.

Steve, at least, was also beaming. “How’ve you been?” he asked.

Bucky shrugged. “The same. Colder.”

“It’s 60 degrees in DC,” Steve said.

“That’s just creepy.”

“Nobody dresses for the weather there, though. Same suits every day.”

“Maybe they wear more or less clothing _under_ the suits.”

Steve grimaced. “The suits aren’t forgiving enough. In my experience.”

Bucky elected not to think too hard about that. “You’ve been—what? Protecting the innocent?”

“Exactly that.” Steve looked down, ostensibly to rifle around for his matches, but it seemed more like he was trying to hide his face. His prerogative, Bucky thought. Nobody in their right mind enjoyed protecting the innocent as much as they felt they should. Protecting the innocent didn’t feel much like protecting. Nor did it feel innocent, when it came down to it. It felt ugly and dumb and like you were playing some sadsack’s imagined version of God, a God with a gun and a government and eight packs of vacuum-sealed empanadas shoved under his shirt.

Of course, Steve hadn’t joined the US military in this century. He wasn’t in it now, either. Bucky didn’t resent him for this, not really, but he couldn’t pretend not to envy him. Steve’s war was at least plausibly _right_.

“Sam’s here,” Steve said, jolting Bucky out of whatever miserable rabbit hole he’d fallen into. “Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to meet him. He wants to meet you.”

Steve had sort of blurted everything out, like he was telling Bucky about his embarrassingly supportive dad dropping by. This made Bucky like Falcon even more than he had already preemptively liked him. “I’m down,” he said. “When?”

Apparently, Steve hadn’t anticipated this question. It amazed Bucky, sometimes, that this guy had gotten so far in life. Yeah, Steve had the wicked strategic intelligence and artistic talent and innate sense of right and wrong. But how did he deal with his landlord? Did he _have_ a landlord? He must have, at least before.

“Uh,” Steve said, after an incredibly long pause, “Friday?”

“Sure,” Bucky replied. He probably didn’t have plans. If he did, they involved going somewhere with Leah, and Leah could tell everyone he had been food-poisoned or something.

“Great.”

“Yep.”

“Cool.”

They stared at each other.

“So,” Bucky said, “what’re your feelings on photography?”

Steve smiled, that wry thing Bucky had missed most of all. “As a genre? Are you asking me if I’m against cameras in general? I’m not that old.”

This was much better.

+++

“You’re not cancelling a date just to harass me,” Bucky said. “That’s pathological.”

“I can do whatever I want.” Leah was tapping furiously at her phone. “Look, she said ‘later that nite then? xoxoxo.’ Night spelled n-i-t-e. This made her like me _more_!” She made a very exaggerated face probably meant to resemble a toothy grin. “I’m hard-to-get! Almost impossible-to-get!”

“Where do you find these people?” Bucky thought, sometimes, that Leah deliberately sought out women she wouldn’t get along with. Not that Bucky had any leg to stand on, criticizing someone for that. Before Steve—

Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Not doing that.

“I’m not doing this to harass you, anyway,” Leah said. “You’re so self-centered. I want to meet your superhero friends.”

“Black Widow’s not coming.”

“Don’t reduce me to my sexuality, Barnes. You’re getting beers with goddamn Falcon.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, “that is pretty cool.”

“Falcon wants to meet you. Only because you’re his best friend’s new boyfriend—”

“—you said you’d lay off, asshole.”

“Fine. Only because you’re his best friend’s new mysterious friend. But still.”

“He could just be in it to meet the inimitable James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Yeah. Maybe he read your thesis.”

“Oh, come on.” Leah liked to bring up Bucky’s thesis, which had received an award. Nobody but Leah, Bucky’s undergrad advisor, and whoever read his application to Stark Industries (Pepper Potts? Probably not) knew about this award, because he had forced his department to remove every reference to him from all online documents and never to tell his parents. There was a pdf of the damn thing on Stoney Brook’s website that had his name listed as [redacted].

He had been a very unhappy 22-year-old.

“It’ll be fun,” Leah said. “Come on. I want to be there, you want me there. If—I don’t know, Captain America and Falcon are actually together, you’ll have somebody to talk to.”

Bucky froze. “You think they are?” He’d considered that, but hadn’t let himself think about it too long, for fear of going into a spiral from which he would never be retrieved. They almost certainly weren’t, Steve would’ve said something, but—

Leah rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, probably not,” she said. “You’re whipped, dude.”

He tried to glare at her. As she was basically inured to all of his facial expressions by now, it didn’t really work. “I’m coming with you,” she told him, “and we are going to have fun. That’s final.”

“Fucking _fine_.”

+++

Steve wasn’t at Stark Tower any day that week. This made Bucky so disproportionately upset that he started watching five-minute segments of _Peep Show_ every time he went out for a smoke. Steve would hate _Peep Show_. This would show him.

On Thursday, Steve texted Bucky after work.

 

**Steve Rogers**

Sorry to not be around at all much busier than expected because of planning are you still O.K. for tomorro night?

 

**James Barnes**

yeah sure

 

**Steve Rogers**

Really sorry

 

**James Barnes**

its ok

!

oh btw is it ok if my friend leah comes

she wants to meet u too

 

**Steve Rogers**

Of course!!!

Excited to meet her!

 

**James Barnes**

ok great

 

**Steve Rogers**

}:^]

 

**James Barnes**

jesus who taught u that one

 

**Steve Rogers**

I made it up

 

**James Barnes**

wow impressed

 

Bucky did not usually have much trouble holding grudges. And yet.

+++

This time, the bar was in Bushwick. Sam, apparently, had picked it out. The place had significantly more wine than beer.

Initially, Bucky had come out of his room wearing khakis. This infuriated Leah to no end. “We all already know you’re gay,” she said. “What the hell are you trying to prove? I know you can’t support those on their own merits.”

“They’re just normal pants.”

“For an investment banker named Brad,” she said, “who just got engaged to an ad model.”

“Steve was kind of an ad model.”

She gave him a very icy look. “You will embarrass both of us,” she told him. “The straighter your clothes, the more you macho-posture. Nobody enjoys this.”

Bucky threw up his hands and put on jeans. This mollified her, and they left. Still, they were running a few minutes late. “I’m going to kill you,” he hissed in her ear as they stepped off the train.

“Wasn’t he late last time?”

“ _Falcon_.”

“Okay, let’s jog.”

Steve and Falcon—Sam; this guy seemed a lot more laid-back than Black Widow, so Bucky could probably stand to refer to him by his first name in his head—were at the bar. Steve seemed unsure what to do, then shook Leah’s hand, so Bucky shook Sam’s, too. Leah shot Bucky a very amused look.

“It’s really great to meet you,” Bucky told Sam. “I’ve heard a lot.” This was true. Things he had heard included: Sam hates Quentin Tarantino, Sam’s a psychologist but not the horrible kind, Sam’s a really good friend, Sam said so-and-so funny thing. Never had it come up that Sam was ridiculously attractive. Of course, Bucky had kind of gotten that from the news, but it was sort of alarming in person. Were they all like this?

“I have too,” Sam said. “Believe me.” Steve gave him a murderous look from where he and Leah were making introductions. Leah’s face was starting to terrify Bucky mortally.

Sam, it turned out, was actually better than Steve had made him out to be, which was already very good. He beat Bucky on the bar’s weird fancy foosball set four times in a row, during which time Leah seemed to be busy cross-examining Steve on his political stances.

“So,” Bucky said, once he’d relaxed into his and Sam’s conversation enough that it didn’t physically pain him to ask. “You were pararescue?”

Sam smiled at him. “Yeah,” he said. “You?”

“Just infantry,” he said.

“Just?”

Bucky shrugged. “Hey, they got my arm. I think I can shit on them a little.”

“You definitely can,” Sam said. “Don’t think you can really use them as grounds for shitting on yourself, though.”

“Alright, alright,” Bucky said. He lifted a corner of his mouth so Sam knew he was joking. Sam was right—Bucky didn’t want to discuss how right he was, but that was the truth. Sam was leaning back against the wall now, open, so Bucky decided to go for a question he’d been wondering about since he met Steve. “What’s it like to go from pararescue to, I don’t know…”

“Therapizing or Avenging?”

“Both, I guess.”

Sam gave Bucky an appraising look, then sipped his wine. “Well, you served in—”

“Afghanistan.”

“Yeah, me too,” Sam said. “So you probably get—more than Steve does, definitely—what it’s like, fighting a war you’re not sure is worth it.”

“Yeah.”

“Therapy…” Sam shrugged. “Therapy, that’s different. It’s hard as anything, and you fuck up all the time, but you believe in what you’re doing, at least from above. You know it matters.” He sighed. “I thought Avenging would be like that. And it is, sometimes. But sometimes…”

“It’s still war,” Bucky finished. “Sometimes.”

“It really is.” After a moment, he shrugged again, a little abruptly. “But, hey, it beats the military. I was—okay, I don’t know if I should be telling you all this.”

“Go ahead.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Hope you don’t regret that. Anyway, my last…” He hesitated. “My boyfriend, Riley. We were together under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Wasted a lot of time not asking and not telling, before we got together. And then he,” and he made a limp gesture that Bucky knew indicated grief forced into a very narrow and casual mold. “That was _really_ shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

“It is what it is,” Sam said. Then he seemed to deliberately rearrange his face. “You know why I’m telling you this? Other than thinking you’re a good guy and wanting to be friends, God, don’t make those eyes at me,” he finished, and Bucky laughed.

“I can guess.”

“Uh-huh. Okay if I say it anyway?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Sam widened his eyes in mock-gratitude. “Golly, that’s awful nice of you.” Bucky made a face at him and finished his beer. Sam continued. “Basically—you know what I mean when I tell you that what you’ve got going now, it’s a luxury. Might not feel like it, but it is.” When Bucky didn’t respond immediately, he went on, “hey, sorry if that was too much. Steve never shuts the hell up about you, so I guess I’m kind of assuming familiarity we don’t have here.”

“Nah,” Bucky said, “you’re good.” His head was spinning, but Sam was probably right, again. In an effort to avoid panicking about his feelings in the middle of a hipster bar, Bucky changed the topic. “Steve never shuts the hell up about me, huh?” Steve and Leah were pretty close to them, at a table near the foosball, but the music was loud, so Bucky didn’t feel too bad asking point-blank.

“Jesus,” Sam said. “Both of you.”

“Both of us what?”

Sam sighed, crossed his arms. “Do you think he’s being smooth? I can’t believe anyone in the world would think he’s being smooth.”

Bucky shrugged. “You probably figured out that it works on me.”

“Well, whatever you’re doing works on him,” Sam said. “God, I hate this. You people are in junior goddamn high.”

“We are not,” Bucky said, as petulant as he could. That got a chuckle out of Sam.

Leah touched Bucky’s arm, the gentle two-tap that didn’t startle him. “Hey,” she said. “I’ve got a date for the rest of the n-i-t-e night.” Steve was standing next to her, looking happy, if a little pink. Bucky had the distinct urge to interrogate Leah on the spot, but suppressed it. “See you later.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “I should probably head out, too.”

“You don’t want to stay at mine?” Steve asked. “I’ve got the couch.”

“I love you, dude, but I’ve seen you too much already this week.” Sam gave him a quick hug. “I’ll stop by before I leave, okay?”

Steve was narrowing his eyes at Sam. “Okay,” he said. They had a very complicated silent conversation that resulted in Sam smiling and Steve looking resigned.

Sam turned to Leah. “Sorry I didn’t really meet you.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I have a list in my phone now of which circles of hell Captain America thinks different politicians belong in.” Steve went from pink to red.

“That’s my boy,” Sam said. “See you, Barnes,” he said.

“Really good to meet you,” Bucky said. He meant it.

“Hey, come here,” Sam said, and then they had a very brief but nice bro-hug.

Sam left, and then Leah left, and then it was just Bucky and Steve.

Steve rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, God,” he muttered.

“Sam’s great,” Bucky said. “Wow. I didn’t know you had friends that aren’t naturally terrifying.”

“Not naturally,” Steve said, “but he has his ways. Whatever he said, I’m sorry.”

Bucky laughed. “He did talk a lot of shit about me during foosball.

Steve’s mildly harrowed expression quickly faded into a smile. “Well,” he said, “I really like Leah.”

“She didn’t get on you for hating math?”

“Oh, she did,” Steve said, “but then I got on her for not liking art.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows, nodding. “Well played.” He looked awkwardly at the empty glasses in both their hands. “Do you want another drink, or…”

“I was actually wondering if you wanted to come over,” Steve said very quickly. “To my place, I mean.”

Bucky blinked at him.

“Or if you’d rather, I mean, it’s no problem if—”

“No, no,” Bucky said, “no, definitely, I would love to.” It was just that a hallelujah chorus and bomb sirens were echoing simultaneously through every square-inch of his brain.

+++

Steve lived in a railroad apartment populated almost entirely by precarious-looking stacks of books and paintings propped haphazardly against the walls. The scheme was obviously about storage, not decoration. A lot of the canvases were turned so you could only see their backs, the wood crosses that held them together. Bucky couldn’t help a fond, exasperated chuckle at that.

It didn’t seem like anything in the kitchen other than the coffee maker and a single burner on the stove got much use. (This was evidenced by the thin layer of dust covering almost everything else.) In the next room, a corduroy couch was set up across from a very small TV and a record-player. Despite himself, Bucky couldn’t help glancing through the open door at Steve’s bedroom: more books, an enormous bed, several glasses of water at various stages of emptiness sitting on the dresser.

Bucky was very comforted that Steve’s place reflected _him,_ Steve as he was. This was not a Captain America apartment, not by any stretch of the imagination. He didn’t seem to ever put away dishes: clean-looking ones were strewn across the counter at random. There was a small pile of very worn-down pastels on the coffee table, next to four library books laid open face-down. Apparently, Steve didn’t buy what librarians said about damage to the binding. There appeared to be significant water damage to one corner of the ceiling.

“Sorry,” Steve said. “It’s… well. I can’t say it isn’t always like this. The DC one is better, though.”

“I like it.” Bucky sat on the couch. “It’s definitely yours.”

Steve sat next to him, a fair distance away but not quite at the other end. “I don’t know how to take that,” he said.

“It’s a good thing. But,” Bucky gestured, “You watch all that TV on _this_ screen? No wonder you think Jon Hamm’s so goddamn attractive.”

“He _is_ ,” Steve insisted. “Everybody thinks so. Sam agrees. Natasha… I don’t know. But she doesn’t _disagree_.”

“That’s two people.”

“It doesn’t mean anything about how I feel about _Don Draper_. I hate Don Draper.”

“Maybe. But you wouldn’t mind if sometime he climbed out of the TV and started—”

Steve smacked Bucky with a pillow. This put them much closer together.

“Okay, okay, uncle,” Bucky said. “Jesus. You know, it’s weird for a celebrity to have a thing for another celebrity. I guess that is usually how it happens,” he continued, stumbling a little over his words, the opposite of drunk and speaking less clearly for it, “but, you know.”

“I do?”

“Like, you could meet Jon Hamm. You could tell him how you feel.”

Steve gave Bucky an incredibly twitchy smile. “I could, huh.”

“Yeah.”

After looking at him sidelong for a minute, Steve said, “but I don’t know what Jon Hamm would think of me.”

“Well,” Bucky said, “you might have to explain things. Like figuring out your and Jon Hamm’s—I mean, he might be married.”

“He’s divorced.”

“Oh my god,” Bucky said. “You knew that way too fast.”

“Shut up.”

“You’ve looked this up how many times?”

“I will hit you again,” Steve said. “I will use my superstrength as a _real_ force for good this time.”

Bucky smiled at him. Somehow, they had ended up pressed shoulder-to-shoulder.

“I, um.” Steve cleared his throat. “I might have some things to tell Jon about, too.”

“I guess you two are on a first-name basis, then.”

“I’ve probably saved his life. More than once.”

“Fair,” Bucky said. “What would you have to tell Jon about?”

Steve didn’t say anything for a moment. He wasn’t looking at Bucky, staring instead at his hands, folded in his lap. “Well,” he started, “I’m not married.”

“Okay, got that. Good news for Jon.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve said. “But there’s… something.”

Bucky felt sort of like he was going to puke and all that was going to come out was helium. He didn’t know why he felt this, precisely, because it had definitely never happened to him, but it seemed like the nearest descriptor of this bursting, uncomfortable, perfect lightness. “Alright, lay it out.”

“Actually, you’re familiar with this person.”

“Sam?” Bucky asked. “You did tell me you were hitting on him before, but I didn’t know you were still carrying the flame.”

“Ha ha.”

“And, I mean, I’m all for people growing and changing, but I never would’ve put you and Leah together. Anyway, Steve, I’m sorry, but she’s not interested.”

“You’re funny,” Steve said. And then he said, “I actually mean that.” And then he moved in toward Bucky.

It was more contact than kiss. Bucky felt all the places they were touching: noses brushing each other’s cheeks, chins pressed close together, one of Steve’s hands on Bucky’s waist and the other on the nape of his neck, tangled in his hair. (The band that had been there was probably lost to time.) Bucky’s couldn’t stop touching Steve’s jaw, the curved bones of his cheeks and brow, the stubble on his chin and the mussed hair on his scalp.

Steve’s lips were dry, his skin soft and warm. It had been a long time since Bucky had wanted to cross the boundaries of his skin and permeate someone else’s, to belong inside someone, to keep and be kept. So long that part of him had forgotten how kissing, in all its weirdness and face-bumping and spit, was, at best, a resolution of that urge, that need. He had known Steve’s scent, but now he could taste it, too. Could feel it sinking through to the center of him.

Steve pulled back a bit, just enough to look Bucky in the eye. “You okay?” he asked.

Bucky had, he was now realizing, emitted a soft, wounded noise. “Definitely okay,” he told Steve. “Really okay. Breaking records for okay.”

“Okay,” Steve repeated, but didn’t move back in. He was just looking at Bucky now. Slowly, with the lightest touch imaginable, he traced a thumb across the bow of Bucky’s mouth. Midway through, he started to look a little embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m just. Wow.”

Bucky covered Steve’s hand with his own and brought it back to his mouth, kissing Steve’s palm. “I am, too.”

“Really?”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “You fishing for compliments? I’m basically sitting in your lap now.” It was true: he’d thrown a leg across Steve, barely conscious of the movement.

“I guess you’re right.” Steve glanced down, then rested a hand on Bucky’s hip, just where his shirt ended. There was a sliver of skin bared there, and Bucky could feel the gentle pressure of Steve’s fingertips. Bucky’s body had a wide and diverse range of responses to this, all boiling down to _yes, more, forever_.

Without quite knowing he was doing it, Bucky was leaning in again to kiss Steve. This time, he stopped balancing on his own bent leg, which had pretty much fallen asleep, and shifted more squarely over onto Steve’s lap. Steve pulled at him, hands climbing up beneath the hem of his shirt now, brushing across the twitching muscles of Bucky’s stomach. He heard Steve mumble indistinctly and smiled against his mouth.

It was Bucky who pulled back, finally. “So,” he said. “Are _you_ okay?”

“I’m the one who kissed you.” When Bucky didn’t stop looking down at him skeptically, Steve said, “I’m trying not to embarrass you here.”

“Go ahead.”

Steve leaned into the hand Bucky still had at his jaw, hiding his face. Bucky would object more thoroughly to this if it weren’t the best thing that had ever happened to him. Steve then said something very muffled.

“Huh?”

“I’m _lucky_ ,” Steve said, raising his voice rather than moving his face. Bucky felt the vibrations of it go up his flesh arm. “That’s all.”

Bucky found himself totally overwhelmed for a minute. “Not that lucky,” he finally choked out. “I gotta get home.”

“Of course,” Steve murmured, nodding a little. This position couldn’t possibly be good for his neck.

Bucky dismounted gingerly. They’d both been kind of hard, but he thought ignoring that for now was probably prudent. Standing before Steve, he tugged his shirt straight. “So,” he started, then realized he had no clue how to continue.

Steve raked a hand through his hair, which made it stick up even worse than it already was. He made no move to fix his rumpled clothes, opting instead to stare, dazed, at Bucky. God, he was a piece of work. It took a lot of willpower for Bucky not to start kissing him again.

“We should do that again,” Bucky settled on.

Steve nodded vigorously. “Uh-huh. I agree.” Then he seemed to realize suddenly that he had been gazing glassily at Bucky’s face for a long time now. He stood up. “Sorry.”

“You got nothing to be sorry for,” Bucky said. “Nothing. Wow. Jesus. Should’ve done that earlier.”

“That, I’m sorry for.”

“Not your fault.”

“True,” Steve said. When Bucky rolled his eyes, he laughed. “Not yours, either. You must have known I was interested, though.”

“I—” Bucky made the executive decision not to get into it right now. This seemed like a bad time to bring up the first-game-gay-dude-Steve-had-met-in-this-century thing. “Didn’t know it was like _that_ ,” he said instead. “That’s not interested. That’s fascinated. That’s some doctorate-level shit.”

Steve grinned. “Yeah, it’s purely academic. Just research.”

That was exactly what Bucky was worried about, basically, but it still didn’t seem like voicing that would be much use. He just made a soft _hm_ noise, leaned in and kissed Steve again. On the cheek this time, just a brush. “I’ll text you,” he said.

“I can call you a cab.”

“Five-eleven, Steve,” Bucky tossed over his shoulder as he stepped out the door. “2 am Q’s got nothing on me.”

As he closed it behind him, he heard Steve saying “2 in the—holy _shit_.” Bucky smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many thanks to a certain E. for being my Actually Attracted to Men and also Totally Brilliant consultant on this one. the kissing scene would probably be much weirder if it weren't for her.
> 
> i’m on tumblr at palebluehalo and am pretty friendly, if you would like to chat!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to all kudos/comments/people behind them!!! you have no idea how many times i have jumped up and down and clapped like a seal since starting this thing and it is all because of the beautiful feedback

Leah walked in on Bucky watching minor-league soccer with a plate of scrambled eggs balanced on his knees. It was three in the afternoon, and Leah looked a little worse for wear, shirt more wrinkled than Bucky had thought was possible and hair squashed in on one side. “Fun night?” he asked.

She shrugged, yawning. Then, suddenly, her eyes sharpened, went narrow with comprehension. “Fun night _yourself_.” She kicked off her sneakers and perched on the back of the couch so she could loom over Bucky.

“Come on,” Bucky said, “I asked first.”

“I have no interest in dying in the arms of Jenny, 28, self-righteous paralegal who lives in Chelsea. You seem to feel differently about Steve, 95, self-righteous superhero who lives in hipsterville.”

“That’s unfair,” Bucky said. “Didn’t he deliver his whole anti-gentrification manifesto to you?”

“Oh, he did.” Leah kicked Bucky. “Tell me what base, Barnes, or else.” After a second of Bucky blinking mildly at her, she hissed, “I will spray Axe all over your bed.”

Bucky sighed, set his plate on the coffee table, and flopped sideways. “Fine,” he said. “First?”

Leah started kicking him much more enthusiastically, which was the opposite of the intended effect of Bucky’s response. “Stop,” he groaned.

“Why aren’t you flipping out?” she asked. “It’s scaring me that you aren’t flipping out right now. I’m trying to hype you up here.”

“By injuring me?” He swatted at her vaguely. When she stopped kicking, he answered. “You wanna know why I’m not flipping out? Benzos,” he told her, “and persistence.”

Leah made a scandalized expression. “Why are you wasting benzos on _joy_? You won’t take a Klonopin when you’re having a panic attack, but when the guy you’ve been obsessed with for three months kisses you, that’s when it’s time for sedatives? Is he a terrible kisser or something?”

“He’s not.” Bucky sighed again. “That’s the problem.”

“That sounds like the opposite of a problem.”

“Well,” Bucky said, “let’s see. I haven’t had a thought not connected to Steve Rogers’ dick in—” he glanced at his phone— “thirteen hours. Meanwhile, he hasn’t had a free five seconds to respond to my text saying I got home without being murdered.”

“He’s old,” Leah said. “He might not get that you’re supposed to respond. He’s probably thinking about your dick, too.”

Bucky thought of several possible responses to that. _But he’s Captain America_ was one. _But he’s Steve Rogers_ was another, this one much more convincing. Most convincing of all was _I’m a blow-up sex doll he’ll deflate the second he meets a hot, available guy who isn’t missing an arm or a functioning cortisol-regulation system._ But before Bucky could voice any of these, his phone started to vibrate on his stomach. He craned his neck to see the screen; it was Steve. Steve _FaceTiming_ him. Bucky stood.

Leah started crowing.

“Fuck off,” Bucky said, and shut the door to his room as he hit _accept call_.

+++

“Hey,” Steve said. He was extremely sweaty. Bucky had never seen extremely-sweaty Steve up close. It was a little dizzying.

Especially when Steve was looking at him like _that_ , Jesus Christ, soft-eyed and lips parted. Bucky sat inelegantly down on his bed.

“Where’d you learn to Facetime?” Bucky said, and then, a little nastily, “they taught you to do this but not to text?”

“I’m sorry.” Steve’s phone camera was picking up his eyelashes in ridiculously high definition. “I fell asleep on the couch after you left, and my phone was dead when I got up, and then I went for a run, and then I didn’t charge my phone, and then…” He looked excessively contrite, which made Bucky feel bad for expecting him to be contrite in the first place. Damn it. “I’m very glad you’re ‘home safe’ with three exclamation points.”

“Okay, fuck you.” Bucky didn’t mean it. (He did, actually, but not hostilely.) “Seriously, why FaceTime?”

Steve rubbed the back of his neck. “I, uh, wanted to see your face,” he said, a little stilted but sincere enough to blindside Bucky. “Sorry. That sounds unhinged.”

“No,” Bucky said, “I like your face too.” He liked pretty much everything he had learned or seen thus far from Steve. He especially liked Steve’s kissing. Second only to the thoroughness of Steve’s convictions, the depth of his beliefs, his refusal to take imaginative shortcuts. The list was probably that, then Steve’s jawline, then Steve’s kissing.

“That’s good to hear,” Steve said, mostly sarcastic but with a nervous edge, like he’d actually been sort of worried Bucky hadn’t liked his face. Who _was_ this guy?

Before Bucky could really consider his plan here, he blurted out, “You want to see my face in person?” It seemed like both the wrong thing (who was _he_ to ask _Steve_ ) and the right thing (Steve had done all the asking so far; it was probably time for Bucky to take a step forward, too) to say, and it was what he _wanted_ to say, so he went ahead. This was him giving it a shot, he supposed.

Steve grinned. “I really would,” he said. “Sam’s leaving tonight, but—tomorrow?”

Bucky’s Sundays tended to consist of torrenting movies on his old shitty laptop, occasionally ignoring some guy from the weekend, and taking a very long run as far away from Prospect Park as possible. (He hated running near other people: it felt like basic with a ridiculously high median income.) Steve wasn’t just some guy from the weekend, though. “Sure,” Bucky told Steve’s face on the screen. “Dinner?”

They agreed to meet at a burger place near Steve’s. Bucky spent awhile trying not to wonder whether the proximity was a strategic move. It probably was. The bigger question was whether this was a good or bad sign.

+++

It was flurrying when Bucky arrived at the restaurant, but Steve was waiting outside anyway, hands shoved in his coat pockets, huge shoulders practically at his ears. “Christ,” Bucky said, “how long’ve you been out here?”

“Not long,” Steve answered. They stood there for a second, looking at each other. Bucky briefly considered going in for a handshake before deciding this was beyond the pale and leaning in, PDA-terror be damned. He’d intended a quick chest-bump back-pat hug, but he found himself nearly kissing Steve on instinct. He caught himself at the last minute and pulled back. Steve looked briefly dazed—that was becoming a frequent expression of his—before he said, “oh, right. Yeah.” Presumably, this was in response to the fact that Captain America kissing a man in public would, if it got out, be on the front pages of hundreds of newspapers at varying levels of credibility.

Bucky almost asked him how the hell he made it through the thirties, before he realized that, a., this was incredibly cruel, and, b., Steve probably _did_ kiss a lot of his dates hello. Most of his dates probably took place in spaces where he could kiss them.

Inside, Bucky considered getting a normal person burger for Steve’s sake, but decided that if Steve wanted Bucky for sex, he could damn well put up with listening to him say “low carb” three times in a sentence. Steve sat in a booth with good sightlines, which Bucky tried not to get hysterical about. He tried not to think about how much easier it was to go places with somebody else who cared about sightlines.

It was a normal conversation, for them—they’d gotten pretty used to talking to each other, if not to everything else. “I never asked,” Steve said after awhile. “Why’d you decide to be an engineer?”

Bucky gave the shrug that tended to dissuade everyone but Steve from further questioning. No luck: Steve was still giving him his Rogers-trademark intent stare. “I liked math,” Bucky told him, “and I liked science, and I didn’t like doctors. And…” He cleared his throat. “Leah’s mom convinced me, I guess. She was an engineer. And—she was my mom, kind of, too. So…” When Steve didn’t respond, Bucky commented, “Sam’s got a normal job, too. On top of the Avengers. Right?”

“Right.” Steve sighed. “I—well, before the war, I wasn’t really in the running for a normal job. Don’t know what I’d do.”

“You’re an artist.” Steve looked skeptical. “Okay, maybe not a normal job,” Bucky amended. “But you do it. And, hey—” Bucky pointed at Steve. “There’s always the column.”

“I guess,” Steve said. Then he started holding forth on his opinion on Paul Thomas Anderson. For somebody so worried about killing being his only skill, he sure had a lot of opinions of Paul Thomas Anderson.

+++

This time, Steve’s apartment reeked of turpentine. He opened the windows, and then it reeked of freezing cold turpentine. There was an easel out, but it was turned to the wall, and Bucky didn’t try to peek.

“If you’re putting yourself through this,” Bucky said, “it counts as a normal job.” Steve made a face as he passed Bucky a beer. It was awful piss beer. Bucky felt an inexorable wave of fondness threaten to topple him; he decided to proactively work against it.

“I should go home kind of soon,” Bucky started. “So…”

Steve peered at him from the kitchen. “That’s fine,” he said. “Whenever you want to leave.”

“I mean…” Bucky tried to make an expression conveying _we should have sex efficiently so I can go_.

This did not seem to appease Steve. “I have no idea what you’re doing with your forehead,” he told Bucky, walking into the living room.

Bucky sighed. “I know why I’m here,” he said. He managed not to sound too melancholy.

Steve didn’t look offended, just baffled. “You—what?”

“I mean,” Bucky said, “it’s not like it’s a cardinal sin. I’ve done it. I’m just saying—”

Steve blinked. “Wait. You think I’m _using you_ ,” he said, “for _sex_?”

Bucky looked heavenward. “Look,” he said, “I’m not throwing some kind of goddamn accusation out here. I’m just saying I get it if you don’t want to be—I don’t know.”

“Together?” Steve was staring at him like he was one of those Star Trek creatures with the particularly awful facial prosthetics. “You’re asking if I want us to just have sex.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I guess.”

“As—just sex.”

“Uh-huh.”

Steve’s face went from alien-life-form-horror to confusion to misery to obviously schooled neutrality. “I don’t want that,” he said eventually. Then he winced, very non-neutrally. “I mean, I do. A lot. But I want to be with you.” He made an abortive, exasperated movement with both hands. “I told you you’re funny before I kissed you!”

He had. And he’d asked about Bucky’s dumb life way more than it merited. And he’d kissed him like he couldn’t believe he got to have Bucky Barnes on his lap. Never mind that Steve was so much, and Bucky so comparatively little, made up of hollowed-out parts and eroded gears where Steve had been so alive for so long. Steve, against all logic, wanted Bucky anyway.

“Yeah,” Bucky said faintly.

When he didn’t continue, Steve went a little pale. “If you don’t want that,” he said, “it’s fine. Of course it’s fine. Jesus. I hope you’ll still be—God, I hope you’ll want to be my friend, anyway. But I can’t do just that and not be together. You’ve got to know how I feel, I—”

It took a minute for Bucky’s mouth to catch up to his brain (and—oh, for Christ’s sake—his heart), but when it did, it took off running. “Steve, _no_. I want to be with you.” He grabbed his arm, which was a little awkward, but probably helped make his point. “Really, really do.”

Steve started to smile, then, abruptly, frowned again. “Then why…”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Steve gave him a very unimpressed look. “Yes, it does. Why did you think I just wanted you for,” and he gestured vaguely at Bucky, mostly toward his shoulders. Bucky was kind of flattered. “Did I do something?”

Bucky bit his lip. “Can we just do this later?”

“If I did something to hurt you, I have to know.” Unimpressed and deadly earnest at once, now.

“You didn’t.” Bucky sighed. “Steve, you’re Captain fucking America but” (Steve was folding his arms and glaring) “it’s _not really that_ , obviously, it’s that—look. You’re _you_ and I’m just this guy you met in an elevator and I don’t know if you’re really thinking this through. At all.”

“I’m a guy you met in an elevator, too.”

“But you’re _perfect_ ,” and when Steve looked like he was going to fly into a rage Bucky rushed to continue, “obviously I don’t mean there’s nothing wrong with you, you clearly don’t iron your shirts and I don’t know what the hell is wrong with your taste in TV but I l—” It was a near-miss, but Bucky managed not to say anything incriminating—“think you’re really great. So I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

“With you?”

“No, on the fucking couch,” Bucky said. “Yes, with me.”

Steve looked down for a moment, silent, before he tugged at Bucky’s arm. Bucky obligingly moved closer. “I think you’re amazing,” Steve said, turning a truly terrifying amount of clear blue eye contact on Bucky. “Don’t you dare roll your eyes. I’m not expecting you to say anything. But you can’t believe I don’t feel that way.” After a minute of Bucky staring at him, mouth dry, Steve relented. “Alright. That’s all.”

“Okay,” Bucky said. “So we’re…”

“Seems like it.”

For a second, Bucky was pretty sure he was going to burst into tears, the prospect of which embarrassed him less now than it usually did. He got it under control just before he started weeping, though.

Instead, he kissed Steve.

It was better the second time.

+++

Bucky did actually have to get home. “I can’t wear your clothes to work,” he said. “Your clothes are horrible.”

“They aren’t!” Steve insisted. He didn’t sound too upset, though—not from where he was sprawled on the couch, shirtless, hair sticking up at several gravity-defying angles.

“Yeah, they are.” Bucky kissed him. “So is your food.” Steve seemed to have nothing at home but cold cuts, rye bread, milk, and instant coffee, all in staggering quantities.

“Fine,” Steve said. He pulled Bucky closer and kissed him again, slow and warm.

They hadn’t done anything below the belt. Bucky suspected that Steve was trying to make a point about liking him for more than sex. Privately, Bucky wasn’t complaining. He hadn’t actually told Steve, _hey, you’re the first guy I’ve actually dated, unless you count Quentin from tenth grade, which I don’t_ , but it seemed like Steve had figured it out. Bucky had told him he’d dated someone for five years, broken up with her during his tour, and desperately avoided her at his college friends’ house parties ever since. It was pretty obvious that a person who did this wouldn’t necessarily hit the ground running, gay romance-wise.

On the train home, Bucky found himself in a car empty but for two guys, a little younger than him, all over each other. He found himself seized by the urge to smile at them. Usually, his only response to couples in public was to stare doggedly at his own shoes.

He didn’t end up smiling at them, but he tried to look as non-hostile as possible. This was a start, probably.

+++

“Dude,” Leah said, shaking Bucky, “do you not have work?”

Bucky tried to push her away. “Mmmffn,” he said.

“It’s a quarter past eight, genius.”

Abruptly, Bucky stopped trying to push her away. “What,” he said. He looked at his alarm clock: eight- _eighteen_. “ _Fuck_ ,” he exclaimed, and started tearing through his dresser drawers for pants.

“You are so lucky I teach today.”

“Fuck fuck _fuck_ ,” Bucky repeated.

“I don’t think you’ve ever slept through a work alarm before,” Leah said contemplatively. “Even when you were seventeen. Really turning a new leaf here.”

“Will you leave me alone if I tell you I’m Captain America’s boyfriend now?”

“ _What?_ ”

Bucky closed the door in her face.

He made it to work ten minutes late, rumpled and with freezing cold wet hair but mostly intact. As he dropped his bag, Elliott leaned over. “Hey,” he said, “is this the first time you’ve been late? Ever?”

“Looks like it,” Bucky said, breathless. He was realizing that his fly had been down for his entire commute.

Elliott was looking at him a little curiously. “Barnes,” he said, “did you decide on a career switch or something?”

“Huh?”

“Russian hitman’s looking pretty cheerful.”

Bucky glanced at himself in his desktop reflection. It was true: he was _smiling_. Had he been possessed by a pod-person?

His phone dinged:

 

**Steve Rogers**

See you at 3

?

:^)

 

“Landlord fixed the radiator,” Bucky told Elliott.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am absolutely certain that steve has strong PTA opinions but am not sure what they are. i welcome suggestions


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many thanks to all for reading! idk at what point it’s customary to stop starting chapters with this but my gratitude is eternal
> 
> this chapter deals with addiction in the family and its effects on children, more details in endnote

It turned out that getting into a relationship less than a month before your family’s primary winter holiday gathering was a spectacularly bad idea. That was because, at least for Bucky Barnes, family always came with extenuating circumstances, and Barnes-Reuter Family Hanukkah 2016 was no exception.

A week and a half into December, Leah was roundly beating Bucky at Mario Kart when Becca’s ringtone started emanating from his phone. Steve had been planning to come over and learn about Nintndo, but there’d been some kind of alien technology problem. Steve had to be constantly prevented from divulging classified information and getting himself and Bucky both sniped down from some skyscraper roof, but he’d let so much slip before Bucky could plug his ears and start loudly chanting “can’t hear you can’t hear you can’t hear you.”

“What’s up?” Bucky asked, not leaving the couch. Leah leaned in and waved; Becca waved back. She looked like she hadn’t left her room in several days, hair in a tangled mass at the crown of her head and a coffee mustache dried onto her upper lip. Reading period.

“Hey,” Becca said. “Hey, Leah. Not much.”

She looked sort of ill, not just physically but also emotionally, so Bucky walked into his room and shut the door. “What’s really up?” he asked. The last they’d talked had been a few days ago, and she’d seemed fine then: stressed out, sure, especially with her thesis to start working on, but basically fine. She’d certainly had the energy to scream at the top of her lungs and throw her phone across her room, startling her roommate enough that she started pounding on Becca’s door and demanding whether she was okay. “My brother has a famous boyfriend!” Becca had shouted. “Really famous!” Her roommate had gotten bored and walked away after that.

“I have a favor to ask you,” she said. “It’s a really big one.”

Bucky furrowed his brow, trying not to imagine his kid sister on the run from the New England Mafia. “Jesus, Beck, of course. Anything. What is it?”

She let out a huge whoosh of a sigh. “You know Mitchell?”

“No. Yes, duh, I do,” Bucky said. Mitchell and Becca had been dating since her freshman year, his sophomore. He was on the crew team, from Boston, and studied business. Bucky liked him as much as he could possibly like such a person, which was not at all.

“I broke up with him.”

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t pretend you aren’t bouncing off the walls with joy over there. I know you think he’s an asshole.”

“Okay,” Bucky said, “fine. But I’m still sorry.” He peered at her for a second. She looked pretty unhappy, but not _miserable_. That was good. “What happened?”

“I mean…” Becca shrugged. “He _is_ an asshole. Also, he tried to get me to transfer to Emory when he graduates. So I fucking, I don’t know, wouldn’t cheat on him.”

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah. Well, anyway,” she said, “that’s over.”

 _Good riddance_ , Bucky thought but didn’t say. He decided to say, “ _asshole_ ,” instead, which sounded a little less smugly correct. After a pause, he asked, “so what’s the favor?”

Becca cleared her throat. “You know how Mitchell comes over for all the holidays?”

“Yeah.”

“And how Mom and Dad love him?”

“Yeah.”

“And Grandma and Great-Aunt Sonya and all of mom’s sisters?”

“Yeah.”

She appeared to steel herself. Then she said, “I was wondering if you would be willing to, like. Distract them.”

“Huh?”

“With Steve.”

Bucky blinked at her. “What,” he said.

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Becca told him.

“You mean _take him to the Hanukkah party_.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But—”

“Beck,” Bucky said slowly, “he’s Captain America.”

“I know.”

“And we’ve been dating for—” He checked the date. “ _Two weeks_.”

“It’ll be three weeks by the party,” she offered weakly.

Bucky stared at her.

“ _Please_. Bucky, you know I wouldn’t ask you unless I really…” She looked down. “It’s another thing for them to interrogate me about, okay? And they already have a _lot_.”

It was true. Becca’d dropped the tennis team, decided to study abroad in Thailand for the whole summer, and started making noises about taking a break before law school. She was, by Barnes standards, on pretty thin ice.

Bucky was, too. But they weren’t paying for his apartment—they wouldn’t even let him pay for theirs. He lived fifteen minutes away from his parents, but he saw them only a handful of times every year, outside of the first night of Hanukkah and the first night of Passover and some arbitrarily-selected birthday they celebrated at an arbitrarily-selected restaurant in Manhattan. It was partly about the joining the military thing, and partly about the leaving the military thing, and partly about the gay thing, though they probably wouldn’t admit that anymore. It was partly that Bucky’d spent most of his formative years at Leah’s, anyway, so his idea of his parents as _his_ was mostly conceptual.

It was partly about the opioids thing. Mostly about that.

Still: he was free, more or less. “Okay,” he said.

Becca froze. Bucky wasn’t sure if it was a WiFi problem or if she’d actually gone stock-still. “Are you serious?”

“You want me to change my mind?”

“No,” she said. “Oh my God. I love you so much. I love you _so much_ , Bucky. You are the best. This is better than when you bought me vodka for senior week.”

He grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”

“I love you!”

“Okay, kid, I love you too,” he said. “I’m gonna go before I change my mind. Good luck with finals. Text me if you need anything.”

“Bye!” she said, cheerfully, before he hung up.

He sat motionless on his bed for a long moment.

 _Fuck_.

+++

“I have a really weird question,” Bucky told Steve. They were lying in bed—more sitting, really; Steve squinting at his iPad like it had wronged him, Bucky reading back-issues of _Wired_ ( _Wired_ sucked now) on his phone. They’d skipped to the reading-in-bed stage of the relationship really quickly, which suited Bucky just fine. (Better than fine, actually: sometimes he looked over at Steve and had to subtly bury his face in a pillow to prevent himself from shrieking with joy. But, well, no one had to know that. Steve seemed to think Bucky just had a really itchy face or something.)

Bucky felt a little bad about plying Steve with sex before asking, but it wasn’t like he’d planned it that way. Seeing Steve usually made him want to have sex with Steve, so that was what they did. And a reasonable amount of time had elapsed post-sex, so it wasn’t like he was catching Steve mid-afterglow here.

Steve gave him a curious look. “Shoot,” he said.

“So I’m Jewish,” Bucky started, unnecessarily.

“Yeah,” Steve replied, looking even more curious.

“And Hanukkah is coming up.”

“Mmhm.”

“And my family has a party.”

“Right.”

“And my sister just broke up with her boyfriend who my parents really like and she was supposed to be the good kid but now she isn’t and she needs someone to take the heat off and basically she asked me to take you so do you want to come,” Bucky said in one breath.

Steve looked confused for a second. Then he said, “of course,” like it was obvious. “Of course I want to come, Bucky.”

Bucky exhaled hugely. “Okay,” he said. “Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Jesus.”

Steve smiled at him. “I thought you were going to ask me something actually weird,” he said.

“What? That _is_ weird.”

“Not really. It’s not like I have other plans.” Before Bucky could respond to that very upsetting statement, Steve continued, “and it’s not as weird as what I thought you were going to ask me.”

“I don’t ask you weird things,” Bucky said, a little offended.

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I—what the hell did you think I was going to say?”

“I thought you were going to try to get me to go paleo or something.”

Bucky stared at him. “ _What?_ ”

“What?”

Bucky opened his mouth, then shut it. “Steve,” he said, “paleo isn’t, like—it’s not an ethical thing. It’s not like vegetarian, it’s… Nobody gives a shit whether anybody else does it.”

“Then what’s the point of it?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky said, “it’s a,” and then he realized he really didn’t know what the point of it was. He didn’t particularly need to lose weight, or build muscle, or whatever. He settled on, “it’s a status thing, I guess?”

“Obviously people _do_ give a shit about whether anybody else is paleo, then,” Steve said smugly.

Bucky kicked him. “Yeah. I’m so embarrassed by you and your goddamn bread. I can’t be seen with someone eating processed sugar.”

Steve stuck his tongue out and went back to his iPad. A few minutes later, he turned to Bucky again. “When is it? I told Sam I’d go to his family’s for Christmas.”

Of course he did. Bucky, idiot that he was, hadn’t even thought of that. So much for being a good boyfriend: first making Steve agree to meet his own whole horrible family, now this. “It’s the seventeenth,” he told him. “Is that okay?”

“Definitely,” Steve said. “I’m leaving for DC the 24th.” He looked like he was going to say something else, but seemed to think better of it. Instead, he exclaimed, “hey, _Democracy Now!_ ’s on in fifteen minutes. Want to watch it?”

Bucky groaned.

+++

“Don’t leave me,” Bucky said. He picked up a pair of socks that seemed to be patterned with disembodied breasts. “Do you want these?”

“Definitely not.” Leah reached around him and grabbed a fistful of exercise leggings, then shoved them into her bag. “Don’t need to give them any more ammunition.”

“What the hell ammunition do they have?” Bucky was biased, but Leah seemed like a pretty satisfactory adult to him: had one of the most impressive possible jobs, lived in a nice apartment, ran marathons, visited her family in Miami every winter. There was the gay thing, but nobody who would be really upset by that knew about it explicitly, and her dad didn’t give a shit.

“My mom’s family’ll be mad that my Spanish is shit,” Leah told him, throwing a last balled-up shirt into her suitcase, “and my dad’s family’ll be mad that my French is shit. Half of them will yell at me for sleeping with you, and half of them will yell at me for not sleeping with you.” She stood back to survey her work: her bags were mostly packed, if sloppily. “My expectations are not through the roof. But,” she shrugged, “it’s warm.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “There is that.” They’d had freezing rain on and off all week. Steve was very sensitive about being told not to go outside in it, due to being treated like an invalid for most of his life. But he was no more immune to the unpleasantness of slush than the next person, so he spent a lot of time scowlingly walking Bucky back to his apartment.

Leah clapped Bucky on the shoulder. “I’m not _leaving_ you,” she said. “I’m always here in spirit. Also, you haven’t gone a day without texting me since you got a phone.”

“What about the army?”

“Didn’t _really_ have a phone then.” Then she went in for a real hug. “Tell Steve bye for me. Tell your parents hi. Have fun presenting Captain America to your whole entire family.”

“Don’t remind me,” Bucky said, hugging her back tightly.

After seeing Leah off into a cab, Bucky spent awhile mechanically cleaning the kitchen. Then he answered emails. Then, finally, he texted Steve.

 

**James Barnes**

do u want to come over

house is weird wout leah

 

**Steve Rogers**

Yes

Did you eat

 

**James Barnes**

no do u want takeout

wait my sister got in yesterday

 

(She and Bucky had shared a pleasantly antagonistic breakfast before he went to work that morning. She had berated him for taking her to Pret a Manger, then turned out to have a very complex memorized order at Pret a Manger.)

 

**James Barnes**

do u want to meet her

before the party

knowing the enemy etc

 

**Steve Rogers**

You know I don’t consider everyone related to you my enemy

But of course I would love to

At yours?

 

**James Barnes**

hold on

 

He called Becca, who answered roughly 10% of the texts she received. “Hey,” he said. “You want to meet Captain America tonight?”

“Obviously,” she said immediately. “Wait, is he _there_?”

“No,” Bucky said, “but he will be. You want to come over?”

“What happened to not wanting him to meet anyone after two weeks?”

Bucky tried to convey his glare sonically. “In the absence of other fucking options,” he told her, “I think it would be better for him to know one of you.”

She pretended to gasp. “I’m on your side here!”

“I know,” Bucky said. “Okay, come over. You can take a selfie with him.” Steve would probably be delighted by that, actually. As delighted as he ever was by selfies.

“Sick!” Becca said, and hung up. She was so unmistakably 20 years old sometimes.

 

**James Barnes**

yea at mine

wow this is a terrible idea

 

**Steve Rogers**

I dont think so

!!

 

Bad sign.

+++

Within two hours of meeting Steve, Becca was curled up across from him on the couch, a mug of wine in her hand and Bucky’s largest hoodie on her back, very obviously trying not to cry about Mitchell.

“Two fucking years.” She pointed at Bucky. “Don’t you dare say you told me so.”

“I wasn’t gonna,” he replied, and he meant it.

“I probably seem like an idiot,” Becca said to Steve. “I’m not usually like this.”

He shook his head vigorously. “You don’t seem like an idiot _at all_ ,” he said, with italicizing sincerity. “I’m so sorry this happened.”

She gave him a wobbly smile. “Thanks,” she said. “Sorry for making you look like you have bad genes in front of your new boyfriend,” she told Bucky.

“Shut the hell up, Beck,” he said, ruffling her hair hard enough to almost count as a noogie. She squawked.

“I think you have better genes than Bucky does,” Steve said. Bucky turned around and started elbowing him, liberating his sister in the process. Becca responded by starting to kick Bucky’s back with her socked feet.

“Under attack in my own home!” Steve was wheeling on him too, now, sort of just hugging him but in a slightly more annoying way. It kept Bucky still for the kicking. “Leah wouldn’t stand for this!”

“Leah would support this,” Becca said. “Steve and I are bonding.”

“We are,” Steve confirmed.

+++

It was a little less frightening to show up at the party, knowing that Becca had been texting Steve nonstop ( _you text for_ him _but not for your_ own brother, Bucky had exclaimed when he realized this) since meeting him. Steve, an only child, was dazzled by the novelty of sibling-hood. Bucky figured it would wear off within the month. For now, though, Steve was very excited to take on the surrogate brother ( _not brother-in-law, dumbass_ , Bucky had to tell himself, loudly) role for Becca.

Still pretty frightening, though.

“It’s me,” Bucky said into the intercom. “Bucky. Your son. Can you buzz us in?”

“Hi, my son,” came Becca’s voice. “No, you can’t come in.” She did end up buzzing them in, but only after some serious hissed complaints from Bucky.

Bucky’s parents _did_ live in a studio, but it was, at the very least, a nice, big studio. Becca, whom they made stay with them even though Bucky _had an out-of-town roommate_ , had strung lights up, and they’d put their huge menorah out in front of the window.

And there was Bucky’s entire extended family. Wow. Okay.

He snuck a look at Steve before the vultures descended. A little hunched over, holding his dumb Mets toque in both hands, his dumb handsome face smiling vaguely at everyone and everything in the room, he was the most beautiful person Bucky had ever seen. And Bucky got to _see_ him.

It seemed way, way too good to be true.

“Bucky!” Bucky’s mom had spotted them.

“Hi, mom,” he said, consenting to a perfunctory hug. “This is Steve.”

He didn’t add anything else, but he didn’t need to: Steve had been trained for this. He beamed at her. “It’s great to meet you, Ms. Barnes-Reuter,” he said. “You have a lovely home.”

Apparently, it took Steve speaking for it to sink in that she was talking to Captain America. Becca’d told them in advance, but the shock wasn’t, apparently, so easy to overcome. Bucky had some sympathy for that.

“Hello, Captain Rogers,” she said. “It’s, well, it’s an honor to meet you.”

“Please, call me Steve.” He kept beaming.

Others were noticing Steve and flocking towards him. Bucky tried to inch himself and Steve away from the door so they wouldn’t block the entrance, and also so they wouldn’t be so clearly the center of attention. It backfired: they ended up, somehow, at the center of the room.

The men, including many cousins Bucky’d never come out to, all shook Steve’s hand. Bucky’s dad shook Steve’s hand with special, embarrassing vigor. Steve, due to having superstrength, was unfazed by this. “I’m so glad to meet you, Mr. Barnes,” he said.

In a Normal Dad voice, Bucky’s dad said, “you can call me George.” It was a crazy thing for Bucky to resent his father over, this Normal Dad voice, so he tried not to.

“Okay,” Bucky announced as soon as the frenzy of hand-shaking had subsided. “Steve’s never had latkes.”

“I’ve had every other potato derivative known to man,” Steve said. “Or—known to humankind.”

“These,” Bucky insisted, “are not like other potato derivatives. Do you want sour cream?”

Steve shrugged. The indifference disappeared after his first bite, though.”Holy sh—wow,” he said.

“Not like other potato derivatives.”

“Not at all.”

A few minutes after they’d settled against a wall with their plates, Steve making an obvious effort not to stuff his face, the seven-to-twelve-year-olds descended on Steve.

“Do you know Falcon?” Maya, Bucky’s little cousin from Weehawken, asked.

“I do,” Steve said.

“What about Spiderman?”

“Him, too.”

“What about Black Widow?”

“He knows all the superheroes,” her brother Tom said snottily.

“Do you know Batman?” she went on, undeterred.

“I meant _real_ superheroes,” Tom cut in. “Batman isn’t real.”

“I do know Black Widow,” Steve said. Maya looked triumphant.

Over the course of the evening, Steve shot Bucky a few curious looks. Undoubtedly, they were to do with Bucky interacting with every member of his distant family more enthusiastically than he did with his parents. Not that Bucky’s parents were any more interested in approaching him and Steve.

Steve and Bucky stayed until the menorah was lit and gifts (socks and kid-drawn cards for Bucky; weird imported candies and notebooks from him, mostly) were exchanged. Bucky gave perfunctory hugs to most of his relatives, real hugs to a few, and Steve did another round of handshakes.

“You want to come over?” Bucky asked as they left the building.

“Sure.” When they were out of sight of the apartment, Steve pulled Bucky close and kissed him, just a peck but serious. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“Are you kidding? I’m shocked you didn’t leave halfway through.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Bucky said, “my parents and I act like we divorced in 2003 and we’ve been playing nice for the kids ever since.”

Steve didn’t say anything for a moment. “I was wondering,” he admitted as they approached the subway turnstile. “Not that I expect you to tell me or anything.”

“No. I…” Bucky sighed. “I should. Just give me a minute, okay?” He dug his MetroCard out of his pocket. “I don’t know if I can do the whole closet-skeletons thing on the Q.”

“Understandable,” Steve said, jumping the bar behind Bucky. He never, ever paid fare. Whenever Bucky brought up the fact that fare was what kept the trains running, Steve screwed his face up and said, “I’m not supporting a system that has individuals pay in exchange for freedom of movement.” Privately, Bucky figured Steve was just some kind of kleptomaniac with few outlets. It was like dating a fifteen-year-old with a Che Guevara poster sometimes.

+++

The moment he’d closed the apartment door behind them, Bucky ripped off the bandaid. “My dad was addicted to fentanyl when I was growing up,” he said. “Still is, I guess. But not, like, actively.”

Steve didn’t register any kind of shock, or even much surprise. He just nodded at Bucky. This was a little eerie, but it was oddly comforting, too.

“So,” Bucky continued, “I—um. Well.”

“Do you want a glass of water?” Steve asked.

“I’m fine.” Bucky sat heavily on the couch, and Steve followed. “I mean—you want to hear all this? I get it if you don’t.”

“Of course I do,” Steve said. “Bucky, it’s your _life_. Of course I do.”

“Okay,” Bucky said. He took a slightly shaky breath. He’d never told this all at once before, like a story, and he decided to go for the no-frills version. “He started when I was—five, six, I guess. Then Becca was born, and he stopped for awhile, and then started again. She—God, she handled it _way_ better than I did. Got a boarding school scholarship in seventh grade.” He huffed a horrible laugh. “That was my excuse for joining the army, I guess. Thought she was okay, so I could leave her alone. Get out. Anyway, he overdosed while I was in Afghanistan.”

Steve inhaled sharply.

“And Becca was 15. At Andover.” He cleared his throat. “Then he went to rehab and everything. He was clean when I got back.”

Bucky didn’t cry while he said all this. But when Steve asked, “can I,” and put an arm around him, Bucky started to sniffle. He managed not do much worse than that, though.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I’m so sorry, Buck.”

“Leah’s the only one who knows. And—her dad, I guess.” Her mom had known the most, but awhile after she died, Bucky started passing it along to Leah in increments. It seemed like the right thing to do. Leah had thought so, too, Bucky could tell, because she yelled at him for not telling her earlier every time another fact emerged.

“Thank you for telling me.” Steve’s lips were against Bucky’s forehead. “God, I—Thank you.”

“Thanks for not being weird about it.”

“I think I’m being a little weird,” Steve said. “Sam tells me my face gets rigor mortis every time something awful comes up.”

Bucky laughed. “Glad it isn’t actual rigor mortis,” he said, stupidly, because it seemed like an okay alternative to telling Steve, _thank God you're alive._

Later, as Bucky was falling asleep, he heard Steve murmur against the back of his neck, "I'm so glad I met them."

+++

Bucky woke up once in the night—a nightmare, but not a screaming one. He burrowed under Steve’s arm and went back to sleep. Next he awoke, it was to Steve extricating himself and climbing blearily out of bed. Church, Bucky realized.

“Go back to sleep,” Steve said, and kissed him.

“Mmf,” Bucky replied. “Have fun.”

“I’ll try,” Steve said.

He knocked again at noon, a brisk shave-and-a-haircut. “It’s open,” Bucky called from the bedroom, where he was reading the news under every blanket in the house. It had gotten unaccountably cold overnight.

Steve was still in his coat and hat when he bounded in. When he saw Bucky, he stopped, suddenly shy. “I have a question,” he said.

“Now _you_ want _me_ to go paleo?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “No. Bucky, do you want to go to DC for New Year’s?” Bucky stared at him groggily, and he rushed to continue, “not for—I know it’s short notice, and it’s DC, and—but it could be, I don’t know—”

“Yes,” Bucky said. “Yes, obviously, I will go on vacation to the worst city on earth with you.”

Slowly, a grin spread across Steve’s face. “Great,” he said. “Great. Okay.”

+++

Sam had a party on New Years Eve. They sat on his porch swing in the cold, Bucky too drunk to care that he was half in Steve’s lap for God and all of Sam’s friends to see. The house was far enough from the fireworks that you couldn’t hear them, but you could still see them, faintly, streaking above the rooftops. From so far away, the light was like a painting, not a war.

Steve hummed badly along to the stereo. “I like this,” he commented on a Coldplay song, and then Bucky made Sam play half an hour of back-to-back Young Thug in an attempt to culture Steve. It didn’t work: Steve went into the New Year with his ringtone for Bucky set to “Yellow.”

Bucky didn’t tell Steve he loved him, because that would be crazy. But with Steve’s mouth on his as the clock struck twelve, he did think it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had no idea what year i was writing before and now i’ve arbitrarily decided it’s 2016 so some details have changed in previous chapters (bucky was in afghanistan not iraq)
> 
> as for the addiction: basically, bucky’s father had a problem with opiate painkillers while bucky and his sister were growing up, and he overdosed while bucky was deployed. relations between bucky and his parents remain icy for this reason. obviously, this is one very specific adult-child-of-an-addict experience.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for your lovely feedback
> 
> E. is responsible for literally 3/4 of this chapter and if she had an ao3 she would be coauthoring the hell out of it. rye henry is hers, a massive chunk of the dialogue is hers, every comment on the respective gay and straight voices of steve rogers is hers, and much of my understanding of bucky barnes’ brain is hers. she is the realest of all possible mvps

Bucky found out that Steve had a motorcycle the morning he picked up his phone, still half-asleep, to Steve exclaiming, “My bike’s broken!”

Bucky made a sound only transcribable as  _ buhhbhuh _ . It was six-thirty on a Wednesday; his alarm wasn’t set to go off for another half-hour. “You—bike? What?”

“My—oh no,” Steve said, “did I wake you up?”

Briefly, Bucky considered just going back to sleep with Steve still on the line. He decided against it, because Steve sounded genuinely upset. “What bike?” he said, instead of answering Steve’s question.

“My motorcycle.”

“Your…” Was he having a sex dream? He was probably having a sex dream. “You have a motorcycle.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Bucky, go back to sleep. It’s okay.”

“Since when do you have a  _ motorcycle _ ?”

“Since before I’ve known you,” Steve said, like Bucky was asking him about where he got his haircut or something. “I’ve definitely told you this.”

“You definitely haven’t.” Bucky would have remembered. He was certain he would have remembered. “Where—what in—where  _ is _ it?”

“In my building’s garage. It’s hard to find parking for it. But I was going to ride it to Boston.”

That, Bucky knew. Boston. Steve was going to Boston for two days. Alien technology again.

“What’s wrong with the motorcycle?” Bucky asked, sitting up. What he didn’t ask: did Steve wear a helmet? And elbow pads? And knee pads? And full-body armor to protect himself from harm? Why did he have to ride a  _ motorcycle _ ? Why were motorcycles sexy even when they were putting his favorite man in the world in danger?

“It won’t start.”

Bucky glared blearily at the wall. “You’re gonna have to be more specific than that,” he said. “You know what, just FaceTime me.”

“No, Bucky,” Steve said. “You should go to sleep. Really. I can figure it out.”

“Rogers,” Bucky said threateningly, and Steve acquiesced.

He was in a fluorescent-lit parking garage, face a little pink from shaving. This could still plausibly be a sex dream. “Hey,” Bucky murmured on reflex.

“You’re in bed!” Steve wasn’t really paying attention to where the camera was pointing. Now, it was positioned so Bucky could see straight up his nostrils. “Go back to sleep!”

“Sweetheart,” Bucky said, because he was  _ tired _ . He tried to cover it up by finishing, brusquely, “just turn the camera around so I can see the bike.”

Steve looked confused. “How can you tell by looking at it?”

That was a fair point, but it was probably better than nothing. “Just try to start it.”

After a few minutes of inefficient commands and responses, Bucky felt pretty confident that the thing just needed a jump-start. Steve, apparently, had never used a jumper cable. “How is that even possible?” Bucky asked.

“When would I have used a jumper cable?”

“In the  _ war _ ?”

Steve shrugged. “I didn’t really know how to drive. Everyone else took care of it.”

Bucky closed his eyes for a moment. “Get Maryam to drive the Prius over near you,” he said finally. “I’ll just—I’ll tell you what to do.”

That was why Bucky was late for work for the second time ever: because he spent an hour counseling Captain America on how to jump-start a motorcycle. Which he himself didn’t really know how to do. Over FaceTime. While Steve exclaimed “oh  _ shit _ ” and “ _ ow  _ god  _ dammit _ ” every thirty seconds, because he could devise a comprehensive anti-Nazi military strategy but couldn’t figure out which wire was going to shock him and which was going to make his motorcycle run.

Though it  _ did  _ sound like a sex dream, the actual situation was one of the most frustrating, least sexy things Bucky had ever been through.

Bucky had already suspected he had it bad, but the fact that he was willing to do this anyway—the fact that his heart still contracted pleasantly when Steve smiled at him afterward—was pretty incontrovertible evidence.

+++

He came home that night to Black Widow beating his best friend at GTA.

She was wearing an enormous Ivy Park hoodie and eating the last of Bucky’s popcorn. After staring at her hopelessly for a moment, he asked, “shouldn’t you be at the alien technology thing?”

“Rogers really isn’t supposed to tell you those things,” Black Widow said, then shot Leah in the side. Leah on the screen made a weirdly sexualized moaning sound. Actual Leah turned to Black Widow and  _ pouted _ .

Bucky hadn’t been able to figure out whether they were fucking, and Leah wouldn’t tell him. The pouting, though. He really wished he had never seen that.

“But no,” Black Widow said. “I’ve got other business to attend to.” She turned to look at Bucky as the level ended. “You’re serious about Steve, right?”

He gaped, taken aback. “What?”

“Nat,” Leah said. She had that half-chastising half-flirting tone Bucky often found himself speaking to Steve in, despite his best efforts. Hearing it out of another person’s mouth was horrific.

“Just asking.”

Bucky dropped his bag to press his fingers to his temples. “What answer do you want?”

“Not a detailed one,” Black Widow said. “I’m asking for practical reasons. I need to convey Steve’s relationship status to someone, and I don’t want to do it on his word alone.”

“Who?” Leah and Black Widow shared a look, then both started laughing. “Fuck you guys,” he said. “Who needs to know Steve’s relationship status?”

“No one,” Black Widow, “and your response to that was a fine answer. Thanks.”

Leah was doubled over giggling.  _ Giggling _ . Bucky had seen her with a lot of girls over the years, but she’d never  _ giggled _ .

When Black Widow went to the bathroom, Bucky wheeled on Leah. “You know something,” he hissed.

“It’s nothing bad,” she said. “Jesus Christ, you know I’d tell you if it was. Bros before hos.”

“Aha!” Bucky exclaimed. “Hos, huh?”

Leah was rolling her eyes lavishly when Black Widow came back into the living room. “You want to get ramen?” Black Widow asked, very clearly not addressing Bucky.

“You’re a parody of yourself,” Leah replied, shrugging on her coat.

“Parody of someone, maybe, but probably not me.”

Leah laughed, and the door closed, and then Bucky was alone in the room, Steve in another city. A really horrible city. (Not as bad as DC, but close.)

 

**Steve Rogers**

Hi am at hotel safe did not “die on motorcycle” thank you for your help!!!!!

I would have died on the motorcycle without you

 

**James Barnes**

is that supposed to be a comforting text to receive

+++

Steve and Bucky hadn’t done the whole standard HR thing, but it seemed pretty obvious that Pepper Potts, at least, knew. She now just happened to pass Bucky in some hallway or another every few days, which would be creepier if working at Stark Industries didn’t mean submitting to the panopticon by default.

Sam knew, of course. And Black Widow. And the rest of the Avengers, kind of, though Bucky hadn’t met all of them. He’d met Tony Stark years ago, right after he’d gotten hired, but not since then. It seemed very unlikely that Stark would have put that glaring haggard face to the Dating Captain America title. Steve said he’d dropped “I have to go meet my boyfriend now” when a meeting hadn’t ended on time a few weeks back, and it had resulted in a lot of stares, but no outright bad reactions. (It had been a lie; Steve had just wanted to leave. But, well—two birds, one stone.)

But Bucky’s coworkers certainly didn’t know. Elliott seemed to assume Bucky and Leah were a couple—a lot of the things he said to Bucky only made sense if you took as read that Bucky and Leah were a couple. Everyone else knew Bucky only by his most obvious traits: metal arm, smoker, constantly glaring, the kind of guy who’s good at pickup sports of all stripes, has sort of pretentious taste in rap. Not the kind of persona straight people picked out as gay—Bucky had made sure of that, back when he was constructing it. (When seeming straight at work had mattered a lot to him, he’d been careful never to honestly answer questions about Tyler the Creator, because his opinions on Tyler the Creator were his biggest tell. That was the only chink in his armor.)

He cared less about all that, now, but he definitely still cared. He still cared a  _ lot _ . It was just that, before, he’d cared so much it was a constant physical sensation.

Everyone would find out eventually, he knew. Unless Steve dumped him, which was a  _ way _ more upsetting possibility than straight guys not bro-nodding at him in the elevator anymore.

It was sort of shocking they hadn’t found out already, given that Bucky still saw Steve at work several times a week. They got lunch together, now: Steve hated the place Bucky got salad and always bought something from a cart (he selected at complete random, and seemed not to register the differences between foods at all) instead, but they sat together, usually on some bench in Bryant Park. They still took smoke breaks together, too. Bucky had started smoking Steve’s Camels, because he’d been cutting down himself, and Steve bought them in bulk: an entire cupboard in his kitchen was devoted to cigarette packs.

Steve was at Stark Tower a little less often than he’d been before. The alien technology thing (which also had to do with Nazis, now, Steve had mentioned accidentally) involved meetings elsewhere. It was okay, though, because Bucky had spent time with him at home almost every day for the past month, ever since they’d gotten back from DC.

He realized it—that he’d seen Steve almost every day—when he realized that he  _ missed _ Steve. Steve, who’d been gone for  _ two days _ . It was stupid, but Bucky’s brain didn’t really take that for an answer. He appeased it by sending a photo of the code he was writing to Steve, because Steve always responded to code with a total hapless bewilderment that made Bucky inexplicably giddy. A lot about Steve made Bucky giddy, inexplicably and otherwise.

+++

**Steve Rogers**

I am almost back!

Do you want me to pick you up?

If you want to come over

 

**James Barnes**

are u texting while driving A MOTORCYCLE

!!!!????????

**Steve Rogers**

No i pulled over

Seriously it is easier to do on a motorcycle

Pulling over

Not texting

 

**James Barnes**

u are batshit

yeah obviously i want to come over sure i will ride on ur death machine

 

**Steve Rogers**

;^)

 

**James Barnes**

HOW ARE U STILL PULLED OVER STOP TEXTING ME

+++

Steve pulled up that evening, holding a helmet out to Bucky.

Bucky gaped at him. “ _ You’re _ not wearing one?”

“I was frozen for seventy years, and I’m fine.”

“Motorcycle accidents and freezing are  _ different _ .”

Steve put the helmet down and crossed his arms. “I only have the one,” he said, “and you’re in actual danger of your brains splattering all over Fulton.”

Bucky wrinkled his nose. “That’s really disgusting.”

“That’s the point.” Then Steve looked up at Bucky from under his eyelashes, which really gave Bucky no choice. Complaining under his breath, he strapped the helmet on and climbed on behind Steve. (He still kissed Steve before they took off; Bucky wasn’t  _ that _ serious about his convictions.)

Riding on a motorcycle behind the most attractive man he’d ever met  _ was _ pretty nice, but it also sort of made Bucky’s balls feel like they were being crushed in a vice. Steve seemed to register no pain, but that could just be the serum. Either that, or the Great Depression stoicism reached further than Bucky had realized.

Steve parked in the garage, and Bucky promptly flashed back to googling “motorcycle like car jumper cable or is it too strong” in a half-asleep haze. He shuddered. Steve helped him get off the bike, which was sort of unnecessary, but definitely nice. Really, really nice. Bucky had to remind himself emphatically that he was not the kind of person who gets fucked in a parking garage.

All bets were off once they were inside, though. Even Steve looked a little shocked when Bucky came at him, and Steve wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet. “So you like the motorcycle,” he said as Bucky was unbuttoning his pants. Bucky bit his shoulder in retribution.

Hours later, after they’d showered and eaten sandwiches Bucky had made (Steve somehow managed to fuck up  _ sandwiches _ ) and settled on the couch to watch, what else, _ Democracy Now! _ , Steve’s huge Otterboxed phone rang. Bucky muted the TV as he picked up. For a minute, he just looked confused. Then he exclaimed, “Rye! Oh my god, what in all hell?”

Bucky suppressed a laugh. Steve sounded so  _ gay _ . Was this how he sounded normally? It definitely wasn’t how he sounded with Bucky. Maybe this person on the phone was—what? Somebody Bucky hadn’t met from Steve’s work? One of the alien technology antifascists? A really, really gay one?

“Congratulations! Holy shit, Henry, what’s his name?” He paused briefly, then laughed. “Seems like something he wouldn’t want to know.”

That was when Bucky realized: Steve was flirting. Right next to him. Over his stupid goddamn iPhone 7+. “Who’s that?” he asked, not bothering to whisper.

Steve shushed Bucky with a sharp  _ wsht _ sound. “Hold on,” he hissed.

Bucky walked into the bedroom. He could hear Steve laughing, ugly and loud. Not the two-syllable heterosexual chuckle he used with Bucky.

When he emerged, fully dressed, Steve was still on the phone. He shot Bucky a questioning look.

“I’m gonna go,” Bucky said.

He eyeballed Bucky, then told the person on the phone, “give me a second, Rye, my boyfriend—” and then the person on the phone pretty obviously started squawking and Steve’s face broke into a grin. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said. “Just a minute.” He held the phone to his chest. “Why?”

“You’re obviously busy.”

Steve shot him a disbelieving look. “This is my friend,” he said, “from before the war.”

Bucky blinked. “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

Now Steve looked very unimpressed. “You can leave if you want, but don’t sulk because I’m on the phone with my friend.”

“What?” Bucky threw his hands up. “I’m not sulking!”

“Mmhm.”

“I’m not! I’m happy for you!”

“Okay.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky said, “I thought you were flirting with some guy, alright? Just give me a break.”

Steve’s face softened. “Oh, Bucky,” he said, “come on.”

“It doesn’t—ugh. Talk to your friend. I’m just going out for a cigarette.”

Steve gave him a searching look, but didn’t stop him. “There’re extras in the cupboard,” he told Bucky, before returning to his phone call. 

Bucky stayed out for a long time, demolishing three cigarettes in the process. He tried to think about how good it was that Steve was happy, how Steve had grinned when he called Bucky his boyfriend. Instead, he ended up considering at length the difference between Steve’s voice now and Steve’s voice before the call. He wondered which was the real one. He hated himself for not knowing.

When Bucky came back, Steve had already hung up. “I’m sorry,” Bucky said.

Steve looked at him for a minute, eyebrows raised. “What do you want to know?” he asked, finally.

Bucky sat next to him. “Nothing.” Steve’s expression went even less convinced. “Okay.” Bucky sighed. “He’s…”

“Rye,” Steve said. “Rye Henry. He used to come to the bar. We—well, he was from Park Slope. About to start at Columbia when I met him.” He shook his head, smiling. “We used to have these godawful fights about it. I called him a sell-out—I mean, I used those exact words. He told me he hadn’t started out with anything to sell.”

Without quite realizing it, Bucky found himself smiling. It was good to know there were some universal constants of Steve-ness.

Also, he was still speaking in that open, elastic voice he’d been using earlier. Bucky feared it a little, but hoped to God that, if this was the real one, the other wasn’t coming back. Not with him, at least.

“And, yes, we slept together.”

Bucky tilted his head. “I thought you said your ex was…”

“I’ve had sex with more than one man before you, believe it or not.”

“Well, sorry.”

“Buck, honestly,” Steve said. “He’s 98. And married.”

“Oh,” Bucky said, “so if it were just one or the other—”

“ _ Bucky _ .”

“I’m kidding. Seriously.” Bucky put his hand, a little awkwardly, over Steve’s. “I’m not that ridiculous.”

Slowly, Steve turned his palm up, twined their fingers together. “Then why are you…”

“Acting like I’m that ridiculous?”

“Exactly,” Steve said, and Bucky rolled his eyes.

“I—” Bucky looked at their joined hands. “You know, you usually don’t talk the way you are right now around me.” Steve gave him a confused look. “I mean—God, I can’t really do an impression without being offensive.” It wasn’t anything obvious, not to someone who didn’t spend so much time thinking about Steve’s voice. But Bucky’d only ever heard it come out in  _ oh my God _ s before now. Most of the time, Steve talked like he was reading off some kind of speech, even when he was just asking Bucky where he wanted to get lunch. There was something effortfully clipped in his pronunciation. Bucky’d assumed he’d just gotten it from being raised an Irish Catholic prude. Now, though, he sounded different. Relaxed.

Understanding was beginning to dawn on Steve’s face. “You mean, not the Monkey Voice?”

Bucky gaped at him. “The what?”

“That’s what—in the USO. That’s what they called the Captain America voice.” His brow furrowed contemplatively. “I guess I talk in it all the time now. Except with Peggy. And, well, Rye.”

When Bucky didn’t reply, Steve looked confused again, briefly, before his mouth fell open. “Bucky, you know I wasn’t trying to—I don’t know, not let you hear it. I just didn’t realize. It’s been a long time.”

“No,” Bucky said, “no, I know. I just…” He didn’t say,  _ I’m in love with you and I don’t know whether you even trust me enough to talk like you aren’t in front of an audience _ . Instead, he repeated, “I know.”

“You—” Steve cleared his throat. “I mean, does it… bother you?”

Bucky wheeled on him, shocked. “Of course not,” he said. “Steve, what the hell?”

“Okay, okay,” Steve said. “Just asking.”

“Did you think it  _ would _ ?”

“No!” Steve had moved his hand up to rub the nape of Bucky’s neck. “Hey. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Bucky concentrated on the brush of Steve’s fingertips against his hairline for a moment. Then he said, “listen. I know I’m an asshole, sometimes, about my…” He tried to communicate facially and gesturally what he meant.

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Entire sexuality?”

“Fuck you,” Bucky said. “Fine, that. But I’m never going to be embarrassed by you. You gotta know that.”

“I do.” Steve kissed him, then pulled back. “What if I got  _ Democracy Now!  _ to hire me? Still wouldn’t be embarrassed?”

“Come on, Rogers.” Bucky settled against Steve’s side, turning the TV back on. “Even I have limits.” After a few stultifying minutes of news, he turned to Steve and said, “I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have been an asshole about your 98-year-old boyfriend.”

“Hardly a boyfriend.”

“Fine. Your 98-year-old sex friend.”

“Ha ha.”

“Your 98-year-old fuckbuddy.”

“I get it.”

+++

The next morning, Steve looked unnervingly excited coming back from church. Bucky turned away from the bacon he was frying to ask Steve, “Did that guy you hate mess up the Bible reading?”

Steve pretended to glare, but didn’t do a very good job. “Buck,” he said, “would you want to meet… um, my 98-year-old sex friend? Next weekend?

“I—what?” The pan had started spitting oil as Steve spoke, so it took especially long for the question to register. “Meet him?”

“Yeah.” Steve was full-on beaming now. “He lives in Newark. With his husband.”

“Oh,” Bucky said. “I… sure. Yeah.”

His hesitation came mostly from the fact that he hadn’t met Carter. He got it, of course, but it felt like he was treading a little carelessly over Steve’s history, meeting this guy but not Peggy Carter. Steve managed to read some of this off Bucky’s face. “I know it’s—I really want you to meet her, and her to meet you,” he said. “It’s just…”  _ Loaded _ , Bucky filled in. And it was. Also, this guy lived in Newark, and Peggy lived basically in the South.

“Of course,” Bucky replied. “Of course I’ll meet him.”

+++

Bucky threw open the door. “You knew about this.”

Leah looked up. She was sitting at the kitchen table, eating tapioca pudding with what seemed to be instant coffee mixed into it. Whatever. “Probably,” she said. “What?”

“Steve’s  _ ex. _ ”

Her face broke into a grin. “Oh my God. Nat was so excited for that.”

Leah and Black Widow had met when Black Widow had to come to their apartment to collect Steve for a mission. Bucky wasn’t clear on most of the details, because Leah told him nothing, but Leah was also glowing irrepressibly all over the place. Whatever was happening, it was probably good.

That didn’t mean Bucky had to enjoy Black Widow’s influence on his own  _ home _ . “So she organized this?”

“I mean, obviously,” Leah said. “Wait, are you  _ mad _ ?”

“No.” Bucky sat down across from her. “No. God. I was just a little surprised, okay?”

“So was Steve. That was the point.”

Bucky took her spoon and ate some of her disgusting pudding, just to spite her. He gagged, but persevered. “She’s against giving me lead time on any of this shit on principle?”

“You would’ve told him,” Leah said. “It would’ve made him all happy and gross.” She pulled a horrible teeth-bared grin, complete with patented Steve Rogers eye crinkles. “You can’t resist that,” she finished.

This was fair. But: “Just like you can’t resist this.” Bucky tried to think of the Black Widow equivalent of the Steve Rogers face. He settled on a blank expression with one corner of his mouth tilted up.

Leah got it. “Go to hell,” she said.

“Technically, you met Black Widow because of me.”

“She wants to be your friend, you know,” Leah told him. “You should call her Nat.”

It felt kind of like calling the president by their first name would. Calling Sam by his name had felt like that at first, too, but Sam  _ liked _ Bucky.

Bucky realized he had a bargaining chip. “I will,” he said, “if you tell me whether you’ve kissed.”

Leah glared at him for a minute. Her eyes were flickering the way they did when she was solving a really difficult problem. Finally, she replied, “if you tell Steve, I’m ending you.”

She fled the kitchen to escape Bucky’s jubilation, slamming her bedroom door behind her.

+++

That week, the late-January slog became oppressive. Bucky found himself going from nervously to eagerly awaiting the visit with Rye, just because its arrival would mean it was the weekend. The night before, when Bucky got to Steve’s apartment after work, he barely had the energy to get his shoes and coat off before he flopped onto Steve’s bed.

Steve followed him, sketchbook in one hand, looking worried. “Are you sick?”

“I’m going to sleep for twelve hours,” Bucky said, “and then I’m going to meet your boyfriend.”

Steve didn’t bother to correct him. “Okay, Buck,” he said, tracing a very gentle hand across Bucky’s jaw.

It occurred to Bucky, not for the first time, that Steve was way more than he’d hoped for, back when he was a scared kid for whom a fulfilling relationship seemed about as feasible a goal as becoming an astronaut. He’d imagined, when he’d let himself imagine, someone—well, hot, but also funny, smart. Someone who could keep a conversation going. He hadn’t factored in someone being able to make Bucky feel like not only was the world a good place, but also that Bucky was a good person in it. Someone who had been painting some kind of portrait of Bucky for weeks, but had refused to show Bucky any of it so far, and kept getting up at odd hours to stare at it with a look of consternation when he thought Bucky was asleep. Someone who actually read every issue of  _ The Indypendent  _ cover-to-cover, and took notes. Someone who did, in fact, have as much trouble sleeping as Bucky did, usually.

In Steve’s bed, Bucky slept better.

He woke up to Steve’s face mashed into his neck, one leg pinning Bucky down. Bucky checked the time. “Steve,” he said, and shook Steve a little. “Buddy, I gotta shower.”

Steve, apparently still asleep, sort of half-kissed half-licked Bucky’s neck. It was not as sexy as it would have been were Steve conscious enough to not drool so much.

Bucky sighed and resorted to shoving Steve’s leg off him. Steve, of course, showed no hard feelings about the use of force. He nuzzled into the pillow like it was a perfect substitute for Bucky.

Steve was starting coffee when Bucky got out of the shower. “Will you,” Bucky started, then realized  _ marry me _ was a bad way to end that sentence if you were talking to someone you’d been dating for two months. “You are saving my life,” he said instead, wrapping his arms around Steve.

“You’re getting water all over me,” Steve said, but he didn’t seem to mind much that Bucky was hugging him in nothing but a towel.

They did have to go, though, so Bucky finished making the coffee, and Steve got ready, and they walked the parking garage stairs to the motorcycle. “How come you didn’t tell me about the bike until just now, but you’re making sure it’s part of this guy’s first impression of you in 70 years?” Bucky asked.

“Obviously,” Steve said, “it’s because I would rather have sex with him than with you,” and he ignored the gripes Bucky muttered against his neck as Steve started the bike.

+++

Rye looked his age, but he didn’t sound it. When Steve and Bucky walked into the small Victorian house, he bellowed, “look what the cat dragged in!” with a vocal power Bucky had trouble believing could fit in such a skinny-old-man frame.

“Is he the cat,” Steve asked, pointing to Bucky, “or am I?”

“Get over here, kid,” Rye said in lieu of a response. Steve walked over to where Rye was sitting, in a huge velvet armchair, and leaned over to hug him so hard Bucky thought he was going to pop him. Rye didn’t seem to mind.

“Paul,” Rye yelled, “I got Captain America in here!”

“What?” came a voice from another room.

“Captain America!” Rye turned to Bucky. “You must be the famous boyfriend.”

“Uh,” Bucky said, “I guess.” He nodded and stuck out a hand to shake. “Nice to meet you.”

Rye gave his hand a very amused look, but did end up shaking it.

Paul was a very pink man with very white hair walking with a very silver cane. “Jesus God!” he said, and went in for the hug with Steve. Steve happily obliged.

He went in for the hug with Bucky too, and Bucky also obliged, but with more accompanying  confusion.

“Where’d you find this guy?” Steve asked Rye. “Looks too good for the likes of you.”

Rye cackled. “The war,” he told Steve. “It does a number on the decision-making faculties.”

“Of course,” Steve said seriously, and then his face broke into a smile again.

Bucky helped Paul get them all coffee. “So,” Paul said in the kitchen, “how’d you meet Rogers?”

“Broken elevator. Seriously,” he responded to Paul’s raised eyebrow. “And then… yeah. Everything else.”

When they returned, Rye was saying something that caused Steve to turn bright red and repeat, “oh my God,  _ no _ ” several times. They were talking about Steve’s sexual tastes, it seemed like. Bucky smirked.

What proceeded was a long conversation, mostly indecipherable to Bucky, about the bar where Steve had worked. Apparently, it was called the Neck, and Steve was a good bartender but really terrible at mixing drinks. “He still leave paint thinner in everything he touches?” Rye asked Bucky, and Bucky laughed. “Pretty much,” he replied.

At some point, a photo album was brought out. Mostly, it was people Bucky’d only ever heard mentioned in passing, Steve indicating their names as they flipped through. But a few included a small blonde angry-looking guy, unmistakably Steve.

Steve put his head in his hands. “This is mortifying,” he said, pointing to a photo of himself proprietarily squeezing the large bicep of a guy in a business suit.

“It’s why I didn’t go crazy trying to get in touch with you,” Rye said. “Thought maybe you’d been trying to forget about your Pocket Rocket hijinks.”

Steve groaned, then looked up. “What changed— _ Natasha _ ,” he said. Rye blinked. “Did a frightening redhead break in here?”

Paul’s eyes widened. “I told you it was Black Widow!” he exclaimed to Rye.

“Huh,” Rye said. “Who knew. Yeah, she put your number in my phone. Said it was a gift. To celebrate,” and he gestured at Steve and Bucky.

Steve ducked his head, smiling. “Geez,” he said. “She’s more sentimental than she lets on.”

Bucky thought about the way she smirked at Leah whenever she beat her at GTA. Steve didn’t know the half of it.

At one point, coming back from the bathroom, Bucky heard something he probably wasn’t supposed to. “Cradle-robber,” Rye was calling Steve. “Robbing a beautiful infant from his beautiful cradle.”

Steve laughed, then said, seriously, “you know I only ever liked people I admired, Henry.” And then he said, “I’m serious about him, you know.”

“I do,” Rye said. “I think everyone who’s ever seen you two does.”

Bucky made a loud noise coming in, and Steve made a face like he was trying very hard to look casual. “Hey!” he exclaimed, then glanced at the time. “Shit,” he said, “we should actually leave. I have to get yelled at on the phone by Iron Man.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Rye said, and they all went through a round of hugs. Even Bucky and Rye. Rye gave him a little  _ treat him right or else _ death-squeeze, which Bucky didn’t mind.

“You better goddamn visit again.” Rye narrowed his eyes at Steve. “You’re my handsomest friend now, by far. Except for Paul.”

“I’m okay not being able to compete with Captain America,” Paul said. “That’s fine with me.”

“We will,” Steve said seriously. “I swear.”

They didn’t say much as they got back on the bike, Steve obviously lost in thought. When they were about forty-five minutes into the drive home, though, Steve pulled over and turned around. “You know,” he said over the roar of the highway, “I love you.”

Bucky blinked. “Uhhrrrmm,” he replied intelligently. Steve turned back around, the asshole, and got back on the road.

Steve did actually have to talk to Tony when they got back. Bucky drank more coffee and read in the living room while Steve had some hissed closed-door conversation about world defense. By the time Steve had emerged, the moment had kind of passed. 

But then Steve said, “I, um, want to show you something,” and he turned around a canvas. It was the painting of Bucky.

It was also a painting of the scraggly dandelions that grew in the cracks in the sidewalk by Bucky’s apartment. And of the fine joints of the metal arm. And of the world, a good place. And of Bucky, a good person in it.

“I love you too,” Bucky said, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm on tumblr at palebluehalo!
> 
> i'm not putting F/F as a category or nat/OFC as a relationship on this because i personally feel immense despair when i think i have found Lesbian Content and have actually just found Lesbian Sidekick Content. but note that nat/OFC does happen here.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♥︎s to all for reading!
> 
> this one is kind of short. read the note at the end if you want to like... be spoiled for general unpleasantness.
> 
> alcohol and (prescribed) pharmaceuticals are consumed here.

“Forgot you had a suit here,” Bucky said. “Could’ve put it to use.”

Steve turned around, some kind of bulletproof layer half-zipped around his torso. He smiled. “I wish,” he said, leaning over to kiss Bucky. The zipper poked Bucky’s stomach, but he didn’t care.

“What scale of global disaster would there be if you stayed in bed?”

Steve, straightening to put on the rest of his suit, shrugged. “No idea. Probably small. But, if it _were_ large, I’d feel terrible afterward.”

“Fine.” Bucky sat up, but didn’t really get out of bed. “How worried should I be?”

“Not at all,” Steve said. “Should be back in a few days.”

“Be careful.”

Steve rolled his eyes and bent to kiss Bucky again. “I will,” he said. He squeezed Bucky’s shoulder gently, threw off a quiet “love you,” and was gone before Bucky’s brain caught up enough for him say it back.

In the months they’d been together, Steve had been on almost no missions. He’d told Bucky that wouldn’t last forever: “we’re just working on something,” he said uncomfortably, and Bucky knew enough not to press. If Steve, historically-noted loudmouth, wasn’t volunteering the information of his own accord, there was no way he should be telling Bucky.

Sometimes, it was hard for Bucky to abide by this not-pressing rule. But the more Steve told Bucky, the more danger Steve was in. It wasn’t like Bucky could do anything to help. He was, in the end, a liability.

Bucky had known this might happen, Steve leaving. It was why he kept a suit at Bucky’s, after all.

That didn’t prevent him from lying in bed, awake and feeling sorry for himself, until noon.

When he got up, Leah was in the living room, though she’d been at Nat’s the night before. “Widow leave too?”

“Yep.” Leah didn’t look up from her stack of exams. She was teaching CUNY summer school now. “Can’t believe I ended up an army wife,” she added offhand.

“Wife!”

“Shut up,” Leah said, circling something in red.

Bucky did what he did any weekend Steve was gone, which wasn’t so different from what he did when Steve was home. He watched Leah, who had developed a greater interest in Halo after acquiring an eSports-level dork of a girlfriend, play video games, better than Bucky but not well. He ran after the sun went down—it was a standard shitty New York July, deathly humid. He fucked around with his work, but didn’t make real progress on any of it. Leah found his SoundCloud from when he was in college, and then she forced him to listen to everything on it with her. The songs all had titles like “THE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH (BROKELYN 2).” None of them had any lyrics, which made the length of their titles seem even more out of place.

Then they watched the Rent is Too Damn High video for the first time in six years. The guy in it actually made some pretty good points.

+++

**James Barnes**

hows the mission

??

ok i see how it is

[Link - Youtube.com]

i bet no one made u watch this in ur 21 century orientation

if u respond i will send u songs i wrote when i was 20

**[Steve Rogers missed your call.]**

**[Steve Rogers missed your call.]**

ok i guess ur undercover or w/e just text me when u can

should i not say that here since it isnt secure

whatever ur phone is probably encrypted to shit

+++

Bucky went to work on Monday, but only by a pretty generous definition. He spent most of the day checking his phone, then putting it down, then checking it again.

 

**James Barnes**

steve?

**[Steve Rogers missed your call.]**

+++

**[Steve Rogers missed your call.]**

**[Steve Rogers missed your call.]**

**[Steve Rogers missed your call.]**

 

“You okay?” Elliott asked him. It wasn’t a joke; he seemed worried.

“Yeah,” Bucky replied. He didn’t bother to look at Elliott as he said it.

+++

“Have you heard from Widow?” Bucky asked as Leah was brushing her teeth Thursday morning.

She spat toothpaste into the sink. “Nope.”

Bucky stared at her. “Just nope?”

“She’s a spy, Bucky,” Leah said, cutting her eyes to him in the mirror. “Occupational hazard.” When Bucky didn’t say anything, she sighed. “You’re freaking out about Steve.” It wasn’t a question, because she wasn’t an idiot.

“You…” He cleared his throat. “She tell you when they’re getting back? Who to call if…?”

“No, because she’s a _spy_.” She shrugged. “Said it shouldn’t be more than four, five days. But she didn’t know.”

Bucky exhaled loudly: frustrated, not really _at_ Leah, but at everything, _including_ Leah. “Would you mind calling her?”

“She’s not gonna pick up.”

“Leah.”

She gave him a long look, then pulled out her phone. It rang and rang.

“Nothing,” she said.

“I got that.”

Leah was very rapidly eating breakfast when Bucky asked her, “is there someone else we could talk to?”

She momentarily stopped shoveling oatmeal into her mouth. “Not without putting them in more danger. You don’t know who knows and who isn’t supposed to.”

It was true.

Bucky had oatmeal, too. He managed to get it down his throat through sheer force of will.

+++

The thing was: Steve hadn’t told him he wouldn’t be able to text, and he’d always been able to text before. Steve hadn’t told him it would be days and days of nothing, and it had been four, now.

Leah thought nothing was wrong. Maybe she was right.

If Leah was right and nothing was wrong, why wasn’t Steve doing anything to let Bucky _know_?

+++

**James Barnes**

steve

please

**[Steve Rogers missed your call.]**

+++

**James Barnes**

whats the longest nats been gone?

 

**Leah Celestin**

idk two weeks?

 

**James Barnes**

can u answer something and not change the answer based on how u think ill react

 

**Leah Celestin**

sure

 

**James Barnes**

are u worried

and do u think u should b worried

and should i b

 

**Leah Celestin**

i mean yeah

but look u cant stress out abt it it doesnt do anything

 

**James Barnes**

ok that is useless advice

 

**Leah Celestin**

well ok SORRY

ru at work?

 

**James Barnes**

obviously

 

**Leah Celestin**

then do ur work

u think i was having a great time doing a fuckin masters while u were getting shot at? no but it was distracting

thats why people do it

 

**James Barnes**

ok

+++

That strategy worked, kind of, until the weekend. At that point, he and Leah broke out the booze.

“There’re some places it takes 24 hours to even _get_ to,” Leah said.

“So he’s been dead for a week and not eight days?”

Leah poured more vodka into his glass. “You need to get drunker. You don’t even sound Brooklyny yet.”

“Fuck,” Bucky said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know how to do this. How did you do this?”

Leah looked at him evenly for a minute, then sighed softly. “I knew that, as long as I didn’t know you were dead, you were alive.” She took a very long drink. “I knew someone with you would let me know. God, I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“How are you fine?” Bucky asked. “Fuck. How are you okay?”

“She’s been going on these as long as we’ve.” Leah didn’t attach any verb. “It’s her job. And I’m not that fine.” She held her glass aloft.

Bucky stared at his own glass. He was drinking a screwdriver, even though he hated orange juice. Leah thought screwdrivers had medicinal properties. “If he dies doing this because he thinks he, like, he has to, to make a fucking _point_ ,” he started, and found he couldn’t really think what else to say. He didn’t know _what_ _if_. The _if_ was bad enough on its own.

“Nat says this is the only job she’s ever gonna have,” Leah said. “And we haven’t said—you know.”

“I thought lesbians were good at feelings.”

“Ha ha.” She rolled her eyes. “What I’m saying is she _is_ going to die doing this, because she wants to, and if we’re together when that happens the last I’m gonna hear from her is ‘you should wear a different scarf with that coat.’ Or ‘Tolstoy has shit instead of brains. Shit inside of his skull.’ Or something.”

Bucky lay on his side on the rug. “He’s my favorite person who isn’t one of my _sisters_. I like him so much more than everything else.”

“You are so drunk. You have one sister,” Leah said, and then she said, “oh,” and then, “you’re dumb.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed, and he kissed the top of her head, which she _hated_ and pinched him really hard for.

Then Bucky thought about Steve again and started weeping horrible wracking sobs.

“You’re not wrong,” Leah commented.

+++

**[Steve Rogers missed your call.]**

+++

He couldn’t get drunk enough to fall asleep on Saturday. He hadn’t been able to Friday night, either. Or Thursday. Or—well. Bad week.

Bucky spent Sunday in that half-hallucinating haze endemic to the severely sleep-deprived, especially those who are trying their damnedest to sleep. He sprinted around the block in broad, sweltering daylight, then came home and watched some indeterminate kids’ movie marathon on ABC. He and Leah had takeout for dinner: pizza, because utensils seemed too optimistic. Leah had been at the library all day, and she went back that evening. When she returned around midnight, Bucky gave her a horrible wave from the couch, and she waved. She threw a blanket in his general direction. He considered just leaving it, but decided that not bothering to retrieve something he could pick up without even standing was sinking too low, even for him.

He only knew he’d passed out because he woke up to the sound of his phone ringing.

It wasn’t the ringtone Bucky had set for Steve, that stupid Twitter notification bird-whistle sound Steve was so obsessed with that he’d made it the default text alert on his own phone. It was Bucky’s normal ringtone, which was the normal iPhone ringtone, because he didn’t want to be somebody who changed his ringtone.

Maybe this was just some nocturnal telemarketer.

Bucky picked up on the first ring.

“Bucky,” said Steve’s voice.

Bucky could hear his own blood rushing in his ears.

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice repeated. “Bucky, are you there?”

“Where are you?” Bucky asked, because he couldn’t for the life of him think of anything else to say.

Steve—this really was Steve—made a soft noise. He sounded exhausted and in pain. “Michigan. God. Are you—“

“Are you hurt?” Bucky found that he was hyperventilating.

“No. No, I—”

“Don’t lie to me,” he snapped, but he sounded too wrecked for it to have any bite.

Steve swallowed audibly. “I got shot,” he said, “but I’m mostly—”

“Where?”

“Bucky—“

“Where, Steve.”

He exhaled loudly. “Stomach. But—”

Bucky, much to his own chagrin, burst into loud tears.

“Oh no,” Steve said. “Honey.” He never called Bucky anything other than his name. “Listen.”

“What the fuck,” Bucky gritted out.

“We were taking out a base. A few bases. It took—”

“A week. More,” Bucky said. “Yeah, you know, I got that.”

“I wasn’t sure it would be so long.”

“You thought it _might_?

“I didn’t _know_.”

“But you thought it might.” When Steve didn’t respond immediately, Bucky made a choked, incredulous noise. “So you can tell me all about, whatever, things you could get _killed_ for telling me, everything. But not this. Not being gone for more than a week, and I thought you’d died, or worse, I actually believed that, and—”

“It’s not like—”

“Never mind,” Bucky cut him off. “I, never mind. When are you coming home?”

“Tomorrow,” Steve said. “Just a few hours. I called you as soon as I woke up. We’re about to debrief, and then we leave.”

“We can talk then.”

Steve sounded like somebody had slapped him. “You’re leaving?”

“I was getting the first actual sleep I’ve had in about, let’s see, three days? Four? So, yeah. We can talk then.”

“Bucky,” Steve said. “I—”

Bucky hung up, then fell back asleep before he had time to hate himself for it. He had a dream about a disembodied Captain America suit breaking into Steve’s apartment while they were sleeping and killing Steve in front of Bucky. This was a little on the noise, but still caused Bucky to burst a couch pillow with his metal hand in his sleep.

+++

“They’re fine,” Bucky told Leah, pouring himself coffee.

“I know. Nat texted me.” Because she was the best friend of all time, she didn’t mention Bucky’s horribly swollen face. (He managed to get it to a more normal level in the shower, shaving roughly so the awful splotchiness just looked like razor burn.)

Leah _did_ suggest Bucky take a Klonopin before work, and he obliged without much argument. The last thing he needed was Elliott (or, worse, his boss, Pia) doing an internet deep-dive to figure out whether Bucky was recently widowed or terminally ill or something.

At 2 pm, it all went to shit.

“What the fuck, dude,” Elliott whispered. “Do you think I can ask for an autograph? For my daughter.”

Bucky stared at him blankly. “Autograph?”

Elliott leaned over to point, and Bucky felt an emotion he couldn’t really identify. It was at the center of a triangle composed of fury, panic, and the physically excruciating kind of love that makes people who don’t even like dogs cry at _Marley and Me_.

A sickly-pale Steve was standing in their floor’s lobby, shower-wet bangs plastered to his forehead, wearing a shirt that might’ve been Bucky’s. He was having a very frantic conversation with Will at the front desk.

“Captain Rogers,” he said, “I’m happy to connect you with Mr. Barnes, but if you could give me a reason for meeting I could tell him—”

“I need to see him. _Please_ ,” and then Steve turned around, spotted Bucky, and sprinted toward him. Sprinting, for Steve, was like teleporting would be for a normal person.

“Bucky,” he said, maybe half a second later. “Oh my God.” He made a move to cup Bucky’s face in his hands, but aborted it at the last moment. Thank fuck.

Elliott was staring, open-mouthed. As was Will, from across the lobby. As was pretty much everyone.

“What are you doing here,” Bucky said through gritted teeth.

“We have to talk.”

“I’m at work,” Bucky said. “Could you please leave?”

It wasn’t really a question, and Steve didn’t answer. “Please talk to me,” he said, looking like he was on the verge of tears. This was the one thing Bucky couldn’t blame him for, because he himself was preventing himself from crying only by blinking so fast his eyelids were cramping up.

Bucky stared at him, silently livid, for a minute. “Fine,” he said, and pushed his chair out. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Elliott hadn’t stopped staring. “This is Captain America,” Bucky said shortly, jerking a hand at Steve. Then he gestured at Elliott. “This is Elliott. We work together.”

“It’s good to meet you,” Steve said, looking like he was the one being introduced to a celebrity, just by virtue of how red his face was.

Elliott just blinked as they walked away.

“Will,” Bucky told him, “can you tell Pia I had to leave?”

Will nodded rapidly, then glanced at Steve with enormous trepidation. “Is it… a family emergency?”

Of course. Now everyone Bucky worked with knew. Of _fucking_ course. “No,” Bucky said coldly, not bothering to check Steve’s response. Intellectually, Bucky knew it wouldn’t make him feel any better. It would probably end up making him feel much worse, in fact. “It’s hard to explain. It can come out of my vacation days. I don’t care.”

“Okay,” Will said slowly. “Okay. Bye, Barnes.”

“See you,” Bucky replied, and strode out, Steve in his wake.

It was a silent elevator ride. Bucky could feel Steve staring at him, but he just stared forward at the closed doors.

When they stepped onto the sidewalk, Steve turned to face Bucky and grabbed his arm. “I—”

Bucky shook him off roughly. “I’m not doing this in public,” he said. “If you want to talk, let’s go to my place.”

Steve’s brow furrowed. “We can go to mine, if Leah needs it.”

“I don’t want to be in your fucking apartment,” Bucky said quietly. That shut Steve up.

On the train home, the looks Steve was shooting Bucky slowly turned from terrified to mournful to pissed off to seriously angry. Bucky didn’t speak to him; he didn’t even hold the same pole. If Steve weren’t staring at Bucky, no one would know they were together.

Steve was also getting recognized: mostly by kids, but a few adults, too. Bucky saw phone cameras come out. He glared at their owners until they put them away, because he loved Steve.

He loved Steve.

Bucky tried very hard not to cry again.

“I can explain,” Steve said as Bucky’s front door closed.

“You learn that from TV?” Bucky went to stand behind the kitchen counter. It was a much-needed barrier between him and Steve.

Steve sighed loudly. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

“You didn’t—” Bucky barked a horrible laugh. “Wow. Did a shit job at _that_ , Steve.”

“They don’t let us text.”

“ _They_?”

“SHIELD,” Steve said. “For security.”

“You could’ve told me.”

“I know,” Steve replied, “and I’m sorry. I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry.”

“So you corner me,” Bucky said slowly, “in front of everyone I work with.”

“I thought you weren’t embarrassed of me.”

Bucky grinned at him. “Yeah, God, what a fuckin’ closet case, right? Isn’t gonna fight with his—with a _public figure_ in front of—”

Steve snorted. “A public figure.”

“Sorry I don’t want a boyfriend who thinks I only exist when he’s looking at me.”

Steve blanched. “What does that mean?”

“You don’t care _why_ I don’t want my boss up my ass about my private life, you don’t care if I’m so afraid for you I—”

“Bucky, I _do_ care, I—” Steve was squeezing his eyes shut, bracing his arms against the counter. “I’m sorry. I swear to God. But are you saying…” He cleared his throat. “Do you want to end this?”

Bucky scrubbed at his face. “I don’t know if I can do it,” he said quietly.

“With me?”

“Not with _you_ ,” Bucky said. “With SHIELD. And the US military. And whoever the fuck else’s orders you follow.”

“You think I like taking orders?” Steve hissed. “You think I wouldn’t rather be here?”

“That’s the problem. You don’t even believe in it.”

“I don’t even—” Steve made a frustrated sound in his throat. “These people are _eugenicists_. I’ve told you. I can’t do nothing.”

“You don’t even _know_ what you’re doing!”

“Thanks for the vote of moral confidence.”

“I think you’re a great guy, Steve. Not Captain America.” When Steve just stared at him incredulously, Bucky slammed a hand on the counter. “Would you have chosen this?” he asked. “Before the war, before—would you have wanted any of this?”

“Wanted what?”

“To be _him_!”

Steve stared at the counter, silent. Finally, he said, “It doesn’t matter. I have a responsibility.”

Bucky laughed, a little hysterical. “Oh, yeah, you sure do,” he said. “Not to your friends, not to me. Not to yourself! No, you’ve got a responsibility to _America_.”

“So you want me to just sit here?” Steve asked, waving a hand around expansively. “You want me to do nothing?”

“I don’t want you to die on someone else’s terms.”

The muscle in Steve’s jaw twitched. “And stopping’s so easy.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Bucky said. He managed to refrain from waving his arm pointedly.

All the anger drained out of Steve’s face. He stared at Bucky, helpless. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Well,” Bucky replied, “neither do I.” When it became unbearable to stand so close to Steve and not be touching him, Bucky said, “I think you should go.”

Steve’s eyes went wide. “Bucky.”

At that point, Bucky’s ability to hold back tears disintegrated, and he had to close his eyes and lean against the cabinets. Steve reached out, seemingly by instinct, then pulled back. He stared at his own hand.

“Can you please leave,” Bucky said.

Finally, Steve did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY
> 
> for those who are looking at this for unpleasantness-spoilers: steve goes on a mission and doesn't tell bucky anything and he's gone for a week and bucky thinks he's dead and bucky breaks up with him over it when he comes back. neither of them is being a particularly good or reasonable boyfriend here. FURTHER SPOILER: all will be resolved soon enough.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> home stretch!! i can't believe how wonderful you have all been, i have loved writing this fic because of you, etc.
> 
> in this chapter: alcohol is consumed, drugs are referenced, homophobia is internalized

“Bucky?” Leah called. When he didn’t answer, she repeated, “Bucky?” She sounded worried enough that Bucky replied, “I’m here.” He didn’t move, though, and it took her a minute to find him, curled into himself on the couch.

“What the fuck,” she said.

“Steve and I broke up.”

Leah’s brow furrowed.

“I dumped him,” Bucky clarified.

She stared at him for a second. “If you jump out the window before I get back, I will be so mad,” she said, and went right back out the door.

+++

She returned shortly with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.

“I’m still paleo.”

“You’re sad,” Leah said, ripping the lid off the pint so vehemently it tore. She brandished a massive spoon. “Eat.”

“Alcohol is necessary here.”

“It’s a weeknight, Don Draper. You were just plastered for two days straight.”

Bucky tried to glare at her, but didn’t get far. He took the ice cream. Then, when he processed what Leah had said, he made a low, pained noise.

“Oh, fuck,” Leah said. “Shouldn’t have brought up _Mad Men_.”

Speculatively, Bucky ate a spoonful of ice cream. A few seconds later, he bolted upright. He managed to make it to the kitchen trashcan before he vomited. It was mostly bile, but there was a lot of it. Some of it got in his hair.

“Ice cream was also the wrong call.”

“It’s okay,” Bucky replied. He shambled over to rinse his mouth out in the sink. “You want to watch _HGTV_?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Leah shuffled. She hadn’t actually taken her coat off. “I was going to, uh, see Nat,” she said. “But—I’ll cancel.”

“No,” Bucky said. “No, don’t. Go see her.”

“You sure?” She looked skeptical. “You just puked up nothing due to grief.”

“And dairy.” Her face didn’t change. “Seriously. Go. Please.” _One of us should get to come out of this without losing the possible love of their life,_ Bucky didn’t say, but something in his face probably conveyed it, because Leah gave in.

She hugged him tightly on her way out. “You know,” she said, “I love the living shit out of you.”

“You just saw me puke up nothing due to grief.”

“Not for the first time. And I still love the living shit out of you.”

He rested his chin the crown of her head and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to cry on her hair and fuck it up. “I love you, too,” he said quietly, and then she was gone.

That night, after showering the vomit out of his hair, Bucky did something very stupid: he reread his and Steve’s texts.

**7/4/2017**

**James Barnes**

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

 

**Steve Rogers**

You just called me to tell me that…

 

**James Barnes**

i will tell u as many times as i have to fucker

and happy birthday america also

 

**Steve Rogers**

>:P

 

**5/20/2017**

**Steve Rogers sent you a photo.**

**James Barnes**

is that u???

 

**Steve Rogers**

YEah sam and i figure out it takes 25 shots for me to get drunkf and thewe went to a karaoke bar

 

**James Barnes**

jesus

well u sound great

 

**Steve Rogers**

I Love hou

More than i eve loved anyone

Bucky<

<3

 

**3/10/2017**

**Steve Rogers**

Happy birthday . You make me happier than i thought I could be in this century. Thank you for putting up with me

 

**James Barnes**

i love u so much

 

**Steve Rogers sent you a photo.**

 

**James Barnes**

ok i appreciate it but im seeing ur dick in person in half an hr u realize

 

**2/14/2017**

**James Barnes**

8p ok?

 

**Steve Rogers**

Sure and you dont need to be so worried about me being recognized i will wear a hat

 

**James Barnes**

im not going into a four star restaurant with a guy in a mets cap

 

**Steve Rogers**

I was thinking a beret!

 

 

Bucky fell asleep on the couch again. This time, he woke up with a completely immobile neck. Also, he had to face his entire office after breaking up semi-publicly with Captain America.

These things were bad. In a way, though, they were a welcome distraction from the worst thing.

Bucky didn’t know if it was better for Steve to die _on_ Bucky or _without_ him. Obviously, he was intent on dying, either way.

Calling things off didn’t really count as abstaining from that question of which was better, but at least it felt like it. Sort of. For now, it wasn’t helping at all—Bucky was thinking more about Steve’s death than ever.

He cried in the shower.

+++

After two hours of awkward silence at work, Bucky turned to Elliott. “Sorry you didn’t get that autograph.”

“No problem, dude.” Elliott spoke quickly, but not _I don’t know what to say about your gay breakup_ quickly. After a moment, he continued: “I’ve run into him before, around the Tower. Kind of jumpy guy.”

Bucky had to remind himself very insistently that Elliott was trying to commiserate, and that responding by leaping to Steve’s defense would be both incriminating and pathetic. When he tried to say something neutral instead, he found he couldn’t speak around the lump in his throat. He nodded jerkily.

+++

The next day, Bucky bought a pack of Camels from the corner store.

Frank at the counter raised an eyebrow. “Thought you quit.” Whatever he saw on Bucky’s face was reply enough. “Sorry, Barnes,” Frank said. Bucky shrugged and passed him fifteen dollars. He didn’t even have it in him to make some crack about the exorbitant price.

Bucky coughed on the first drag. His cilia, it turned out, were back, and more hellbent on protecting his lungs from foreign particles than ever before. And about halfway through the cigarette, he got tired of it, which never used to happen—they weren’t lying when they told him Wellbutrin would make smoking feel like a chore, it turned out.

He got through the whole pack within a couple days, anyway. Even though, without Steve there, the smoke only barely smelled like him.

+++

Bucky came home one night to Natasha standing in his living room. It wasn’t that he hadn’t anticipated this, but he had hoped to delay it a little longer.

Oh well.

“Hey,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m waiting for Leah,” she announced loudly.

“Nat,” Leah called from her bedroom. A _be nice_ warning.

“I figured,” Bucky said to Nat. She just glared at him.

He sighed.

“You know,” she said, folding her arms, “the last thing he needs right now is an ultimatum.”

Bucky squinted. “What?”

“He’s been thinking about it for months, and you don’t even have the decency to let him make the decision himself. No wonder he didn’t tell you.” She sighed. “He would’ve chosen this anyway. But…”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Natasha gave him a very nasty look as Leah emerged from her room. Leah, noticing it, crossed her arms. “Come on,” she said.

“Come on what?” Natasha checked her phone camera and licked some lipstick off her teeth. “Let’s go. We’re going to be late.”

“Since when do you want to go to a math lecture this badly?”

“Since Boolean values were the basis for rudimentary cybersecurity?

Leah rolled her eyes. “Okay, nerd. Bye, Bucky.”

It was nice that Leah was in love, Bucky thought as the door closed behind them.

It was.

Bucky envied Leah so much he could scream, right then, but he could still acknowledge that it was nice she was in love.

+++

**4/17/2017**

**Steve Rogers sent you an image.**

**Steve Rogers**

Medical illustrations i did before the war!

 

**James Barnes**

HOLY SHIT

STEVE THATS SO FUCKING COOL

 

**Steve Rogers**

:^)

 

+++

Bucky had, without realizing it, become the type of person who screams at CNN anchors on TV for not being sufficiently sympathetic to the proletariat.

Stubbornly, he watched _Tonight_ anyway. In his current state, any given lefty media outlet was liable to send him into a tailspin.

+++

On Saturday night, he and Leah went to a bar. They left early, because Leah kept having to confiscate his phone before he could text Steve. Unsent messages included “i love u babty,” “im sorry pls i cat live wouu,” and, mysteriously, “slktevebf.”

“It’s not that I don’t think you should get back with him,” Leah said, once they’d piled into the back of a cab.

“You think I should apologize?”

“I—never mind. Bottom line, I don’t think you should do it like this.”

“I should crawl back some other way?”

She sighed. “I know you, Barnes, and I know you don’t have enough pride to stay away from him for that reason.”

Bucky gave her a look even he knew was depressingly watery. “What did Nat mean?”

“Huh?”

“He… had a decision.” After pausing for a moment, she squeezed his shoulder. “I swear to God, if it was mine to tell you, I would.”

“What happened to bros before hos?”

“Bros don’t let bros factor uncertainties into their relationship plans.”

Bucky groaned and put his head on her shoulder.

+++

The next morning, Bucky woke up hungover, checked his phone, and screamed.

“What?” Leah yelled groggily. Bucky was too busy staring at his _New York Times_ notification in shock to respond.

It read:

**Breaking News: Steven Grant Rogers, better known as Captain America, has renounced his title.**

That article was, more or less, a glorified press release. There was only one quote, and it was from Steve, who’d told them (told _Democracy Now!_ , actually. _Democracy Now!_ had broken the story on their website. _Democracy_ the fuck _Now!_ ), “I’ve been honored to hold the title of Captain America, but I think it’s only right I step down and allow someone else to carry that legacy forward. It’s not right for my life anymore, and I think I’d be doing the country a disservice to pretend my life is right for it.”

Everything had broken five hours prior, at seven a.m.

Leah banged on Bucky’s door. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she shouted.

“Open the door,” he said, “and look at my phone,” and he held it out to her.

She raised her eyebrows. “Damn.”

Slowly, Bucky realized why she was under-reacting. “You knew about this.”

“I didn’t know when or if. Just that he’s been thinking about it for months.”

Bucky stared at her. “Is this a fucking _romantic gesture_?”

“Bucky,” she said.

“Is this his _shit-for-brains romantic gesture?_ ”

“Okay. Slow down.”

“You are all batshit crazy,” he said, pulling on the first pair of basketball shorts he found in his hamper. There was a hot sauce stain on one leg, inexplicably. For the first time in his life, Bucky didn’t care. “Oh my god. What the fuck. Give me those.” He pointed to his shoes.

Leah handed them over, not even complaining about the order. “Tell him high-five from me.”

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” Bucky said. He barely remembered to brush his teeth before he sprinted out of the apartment. He hadn’t even pissed.

Bucky made the instantaneous decision that going on the subway in this state would be uncourteous to everyone else on the train, what with his jiggling thigh (pee plus panic) and crazed expression and all. He managed to flag down a cab. A few minutes after he told the driver Steve’s address, the guy—Louis, New York state commercial driving-certified—turned around at a stoplight. “Hey,” he said, “did you hear about Captain America?”

Bucky wheezed. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Captain America.”

“No idea why you’d let all that go,”he said. “Unless, I don’t know. Maybe he wanted a family.”

“I guess,” Bucky said, experiencing a heart palpitation.

Steve’s entire block was swamped with reporters. Over the course of the ride, Bucky had managed to steel himself some, and this scared him significantly less than seeing Steve did. “This is me,” he told Louis, swiping his card through the reader. “Thanks, man.”

“You too. What’s up here?”

Bucky shrugged and closed the car door.

The seething throng of business casual barely registered Bucky, for the most part, though some journalists gave him dirty looks when he elbowed past them. As he got closer to the entrance, they started eying Bucky suspiciously. “Do you know Captain—um, Mr. Rogers?” one asked.

“Please fuck off,” Bucky replied, shouldering a guy with a huge camera out of his way.

He realized, when he actually made it to the door, that buzzing Steve would cause every single vulture to descend. He considered buzzing Maryam instead, but realized the din of reporters would probably drown out anything he tried to say.

**James Barnes**

im outside ur apt

can u let me in?

 

**[You missed a call from Steve Rogers.]**

 

**James Barnes**

steve u r not gna be able to hear a word i say im surrounded by reporters

can u pls just let me in

unless u want me to go

 

**Steve Rogers**

Of course I don’t want you to go

It’s unlocked im holding down the unlock button on the apartment phone

Are you in I cant keep holding it down

 

**James Barnes**

yea ok ok getting in elevatr

+++

Steve opened the door.

Bucky’d never seen him so tired: dark blue circles under his eyes, freckles standing in sharp contrast to his general pallor, cheeks a little hollow. Had he lost weight? Bucky felt a horrible swoop of shame in his stomach. Had he lost weight because of _Bucky_?

But he also looked—relieved, somehow. Not the kind of relief you read about in memoirs, the coming-clean, living-your-truth kind. It was a simple relief. It was the relief of a person who’d finished some work that had taken way too long.

“Hi,” Steve said. “The reporters are… Tony tipped them off. To where I live. Because I didn’t tell him that I was going to, well.”

“Asshole,” Bucky replied.

“Yeah. I thought they would leave me alone if the news broke on Sunday morning, but, well. If I’m not Captain America, it doesn’t matter whether I go to Mass.”

They just looked at each other for a minute. “You’re so dumb,” Bucky said, finally.

“Yeah,” Steve repeated. Bucky looked at him some more, until Steve continued: “It wasn’t about you.”

Bucky moved his chin in something that wasn’t quite a nod.

“It wasn’t _just_ about you,” Steve amended.

He was insane, and Bucky loved him. But—“I don’t want to fuck up your life,” Bucky told him.

“You’re not. I’m serious. It—I was thinking about it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have—” _Been such an asshole about it_ , Bucky finished, silently. It probably wasn’t true. He probably would have been just as much of an asshole about it, if not more. He resolved never to be that much of an asshole again.

Steve shrugged. “I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want you to think it was about, you know, how much I felt about you.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “Okay,” he said slowly.

“Yeah,” Steve said, “I know.” He swallowed audibly. “I don’t expect you to stay with me.”

Bucky flinched. “What the hell?”

“I don’t mean this to pressure you, I’m trying to say. It’s—I’m being honest when I say it’s not about you. And I—”

“Steve,” Bucky said, “the reason I’m not talking right now is that I’m trying to suppress the urge to propose.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Steve rubbed the back of his own neck. “Um,” he said, “I want to ask you something, and I want to kiss you, but I don’t know what the appropriate order is.”

“Can we kiss first?”

Steve didn’t need to be told twice. He pressed Bucky gently against the door. Bucky was worried, momentarily, that he would cry and get snot all over Steve’s face. He managed not to.

They ended up migrating to the couch, both lying on their sides. There wasn’t really room for them. It was okay—Bucky just kept his arm around Steve so he wouldn’t fall off.

“Alright,” Steve said, pulling away a few inches. “I also want to ask you something.”

“You said.” When Steve didn’t bite, Bucky squeezed Steve’s forearm, which he had been sort of idly holding. It was a perfect forearm. It was the best forearm in the universe. “Shoot.”

“I, well.” He cleared his throat. “I assume we aren’t broken up.”

Bucky stared at him in disbelief. “How are you _real_ ,” he said. This didn’t appear to comfort Steve. “No, we aren’t broken up, dumbass. I was about to come groveling on my hands and knees _without_ this, okay? And I just said I wanted to propose. And—”

“Okay,” Steve said, “okay. So, I have to get rid of this apartment.”

“I assumed.”

“And I’m wondering if you, um. If you would want to live together.”

Here it was: the most baffling week of Bucky’s life.

“Bucky?”

“Yes. That. Yeah. Good idea,” he mumbled, and then he started kissing Steve again, this time with more intention.

+++

Leah had gotten a _tenure_ -track _position_ at a _university_ in _Manhattan_ , so she didn’t mind Bucky moving out. This, at least, was what she told him.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She glared. “Bucky,” she said, “you have no idea how excited I am not to share an apartment with a guy who has regular sex with the strongest man alive.”

“Oh,” Bucky said. “Yeah.”

“Uh huh.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m so happy for you. You have no idea how happy I am for you.”

“I got an inkling.”

“I’m ecstatic for you. I mean that I feel like I’m on E, and it’s all because of you.”

“You hated E.”

“There was something in that E that wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“Whatever you say.”

Bucky didn’t bring up Natasha, though he did make a snarky comment about _look who’s U-Hauling now_ when the moving van came, because he couldn’t really resist. Steve and Leah both rolled their eyes at the remark. Natasha rolled her eyes much more aggressively, but she also gave Bucky an affectionate (?) punch to the shoulder. She was either starting to like Bucky or starting to really, really hate them. Steve and Leah both said it was the former.

The new apartment was in Bed-Stuy. It was less expensive than Bucky’s apartment with Leah, and much more expensive than Steve’s old one. Steve had yelped aloud when he saw the rent; it had taken a lot of persuading for Steve to not start screaming at the realtor about how _there is no way granite could be worth this for anyone_ and all.

They set up a whole room as Steve’s studio. Bucky claimed this was to contain the turpentine smell; actually, it was because Steve just deserved a studio. (Though the turpentine _was_ a factor.) When Bucky had asked him what he wanted to do now, he’d shrugged. “I still want to seriously harm eugenicists,” he told Bucky honestly. “Maybe that’s a bad thing, but I’m going to keep doing it, anyway. Otherwise…” He shrugged. “Paint, I guess.” If he was going to paint, Bucky thought, he was going to damn well _paint._

When they went out to IKEA for furniture, Bucky tried to enlist a saleswoman in convincing Steve they should get a king-size bed, not a queen, because _Steve was a super-soldier_. This backfired when the saleswoman asked, “are you two moving in together?”

“Yeah,” Steve said happily. Bucky made a Herculean effort not to wince in his customary no-homo fashion. How Steve didn’t get that from his upbringing and Bucky did, Bucky still wasn’t sure.

The saleswoman smiled, then glanced, not very subtly, at their ring fingers. Bucky had to turn around and start very intently reading a label to conceal his blush. (It didn’t really work.)

When she left, Steve commented, “You know, I don’t believe in marriage.”

Bucky glanced at him sidelong. “Gay marriage?”

Steve looked affronted. “I don’t mean _that_ ,” he said. “I mean, for anyone. It’s oppressive.”

“Oppressive for,” Bucky started, and then he glanced heavenward. It wasn’t really worth it. “Okay, Rogers,” he said. Then he kissed Steve on the mouth, for God and every other IKEA patron to see, just because.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one last time, THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR READING!!!!
> 
> here: wine is consumed, weed is smoked, best friends are (in brief flashbacks) mean to each other in typical best-friend fashion

Leah was packing up after office hours when her phone rang. Office, not cell.

She sighed. Nobody called the landline but her dad (when he was annoyed), her aunts (when they were mad), and Nat (when she was on a paranoid roll and wanted to throw CUNY off their trail. She usually pretended to be a Mary Kay lady, for whatever reason).

Any of these options meant that Leah didn’t have one.

“Assistant Professor Leah Celestin in the Baruch College department of mathematics how can I help you,” she droned, utterly resigned.

“Leah! Hi!”

“Steve?”

“It’s me.”

He sounded incredibly nervous, but Leah didn’t know whether that was just because he was on the phone with someone who had, minutes ago, been doing high-level abstract math. Even the suggestion of algebra made him shudder. Still: “Are you okay?”

“Yeah! Yeah, absolutely,” he said, not sounding okay in the slightest. “Listen, if I’m calling at a bad time—”

“This is fine,” Leah said. Actually, she really, really needed a coffee, a croissant, and to be out of her tiny cinderblock office. “But… why are you calling me here?”

“Oh, um. I didn’t want Nat to find out. Or, well, Bucky, of course.”

Of course? “Are you sure everything’s okay?” she asked slowly.

“Yes, no, seriously, it is. I’m just calling because, uh.” He seemed to be hyperventilating. Leah was fishing her cell phone out of her bag, prepared to fire off as many “is steve being held hostage by a right-wing paramilitary group sos” texts as necessary, when Steve went on, “I’m just asking for your blessing. About Bucky.”

“Blessing?”

“Yeah.” Steve exhaled loudly. “To marry him.”

For a moment, she found herself speechless. Finally, she managed a shrill, “ _what_?”

He breathed loudly into the phone. “I’m going to propose.”

Then Leah found her voice. “He’s been up your ass about this for, like, a year and a half,” Leah said, “and you’re _asking_ me? Aren’t you against it, anyway?”

“Marriage?”

“No,” she replied, “Sinn Féin.”

“Of course I’m not against Sinn—ugh,” Steve said, realizing very late that he was being made fun of. “Yes, I’m against it, in theory. Marriage, I mean,” Steve said. “It’s—oh, God. It’s a long story.”

Leah zipped her bag closed. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said. “You’re going to meet me at a coffee shop, and I’m going to eat a really unfairly late lunch, and you’re going to explain this to me.”

Steve sighed. “Okay.” For someone so stubborn, he was amazingly easy to boss around.

+++

The place Leah had chosen was ostentatiously cluttered and run-down, because she did, in her heart of hearts, care about making Steve comfortable, and taking him anywhere that looked up to health code might send him into a guilt spiral. She was drinking her coffee from a chipped mug and shoving some vaguely almondy thing into her mouth when Steve walked in. She waved, and he flopped into the seat across from her.

“Hey,” she said, swallowing.

He looked a little under the weather, which, for him, indicated he’d recently been hit by a car. “Hi,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows. “You look awful.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean that as an interrogative.”

He sighed. “I was taking out an, um, human experimentation lab with Sam last week.”

This wasn’t so surprising—Sam had taken up the Cap mantle after Steve slithered out of it, but that didn’t mean Steve had stopped putting himself in mortal danger. In fact, now that he was free to pick and choose his mortal danger, he was more enthusiastic about it than ever. He was especially enthusiastic about it when his best friend was in mortal danger with him. Leah found this perverse and unrelatable, but, according to Nat, it made sense.

“Uh-huh,” Leah said. “And?”

“I got hurt, and they wouldn’t let Bucky see me in the hospital.”

Leah squinted at him. “How has this never happened before?”

“They usually take me to Stark Tower when I’m hurt,” Steve said. “But this time it was—well, anyway, I went to Columbia Presbyterian instead.” Leah translated this to _it was touch-and-go enough that no one wanted to risk the helicopter ride._ “Tony lets Bucky see me,” he added. “Obviously.”

Hospital visits hadn’t been a factor when Leah and Nat had decided to get—whatever the verb form of civil union is. Nat had enough fake documents on file for both of them that they could probably each go into Witness Protection eight times over without having to involve the police. Some of the documents said they were married.

Anyway, Nat went to the hospital rarely, and she quickly established a reign of terror over every medical professional in sight each time she did. Nat could probably get them to arrange her a bedside meeting with the queen of England, if she really wanted to.

“God,” Leah said. “I’m sorry.” She really was. For Steve and Bucky both.

He nodded. “Bucky didn’t bring it up, because I’ve been so… you know.” This, on the other hand, translated to _I go into a conniption fit over the dowry system every time I hear the phrase ‘marriage equality.’_

“I do know,” Leah replied.

“But,” he said, “I thought about it. Because of the hospital, but also…” He shrugged. “I guess I realized why he cares about it. And I care about him more than I care about being right. Right about this, at least.”

Leah felt some 16-year-old version of herself burst into happy tears.

Steve eyeballed her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m glad my best friend found love, alright? Jesus,” she said, fake-exasperated. “Okay. You have my blessing.”

Steve beamed. “God. Thank you so much, Leah.”

“Be nice to him.” She raised her eyebrows. “I mean it, Rogers. Not a scratch.”

“I will,” he said seriously. How Bucky could be attracted to someone so unrelentingly earnest was beyond Leah, though she did like Steve a lot. Loved him, even. Steve was the kind of brother-in-law who ends up one of your pallbearers. (Unless Steve died before her. If he did, it would definitely be his own fault. Leah was pretty healthy, but green juice couldn’t compete with genetic enhancements.)

Speaking in-laws: “Did you talk to Becca?” Leah asked.

“She’s going to call me later,” he replied.

Neither of them brought up Bucky’s parents, but it wasn’t that big a deal, Leah figured. Nat hadn’t asked for Leah’s dad’s blessing, after all.

That image made Leah start giggling hysterically. “It’s nothing,” she said, when Steve shot her a questioning look.

+++

Nat had proposed, if you could really call it that, as she and Leah were choking down gross collagen smoothies one Tuesday before work. They were filling out a crossword, and Leah had guessed CIVILUNION for the clue “Domestic partnership, by law.”

“We should get one of those,” Nat had remarked, penciling it in.

“A… crossword?”

Nat gave her a dry look. “Guess.”

Leah stared at her. “One of…”

“A civil union.”

“Yeah,” Leah said. “Yeah. Okay. Um… why?”

“You don’t make me feel like a preserved insect,” Nat said. Then she continued, brusque the way she only got when her feeling were already critically wounded, “It’s your choice.”

“Are you crazy? Of course I—oh my God, Nat.” Leah scooted her chair around so she could sort of hug-shove Nat without standing up. “You want me not to be surprised? Sorry that I care whether my girlfriend’s been replaced by a pod-person.” Also, the insect thing wasn’t quite a ringing endorsement.

Nat sighed. “Okay,” she said. “You’re the only person I could stand spending my entire life with. And I want to do that.”

Leah stared at her some more.

“Jesus,” Nat muttered, “just forget I said anything.”

“You are being such a dude about this,” Leah said, and kissed her. “I want to be with you forever, too. Let’s get a civil union.”

“‘M not being a dude about it,” Nat said against Leah’s mouth. “That’s a gender role, Leah.”

“It’s toxic masculinity,” Leah replied, “and Bucky Barnes has less of it than you do. Bucky Barnes, who still sends me photos from dressing rooms captioned ‘do I look too gay.’”

Nat bit Leah’s lower lip. “Considering everything, I’m very well-adjusted.”

“I never said you weren’t.”

That Friday, they both took off work and went to the courthouse in the morning. They had very expensive brunch to celebrate. Afterwards, they gave each other second lobe piercings rather than exchanging rings.

Their honeymoon consisted of a weekend in Montauk. They swam in the ocean, even though it was October and pretty much freezing. Nat insisted that the saltwater was why her ear, which Leah had done a shit job of piercing, hadn’t gotten infected.

Leah thought about this the whole train ride home. When she opened the door to their apartment, Nat had some kind of classified dossier spread out on the kitchen table. She somehow managed to nod at Leah without looking up.

“Hi,” Leah said. Apparently, she sounded suspicious, because Nat whipped her head around, eyes narrowed. “Right to remain silent!” Leah yelped, before Nat could ask her anything. Nat just sighed and turned back to her work.

+++

Bucky called at midnight, waking both Leah and Nat. Leah went into the living room to take the call.

“What’s up?”

“Steve and I are getting married,” Bucky said.

“Congratulations!” she told him. Then: “Rogers really doesn’t waste time, does he.”

“You knew?

“He wanted my blessing.”

“Oh,” Bucky said. She could very clearly picture the dopey smile on his face. “You’re gonna have to share best man with Becca, you know.”

“Figured,” she said. “Let’s go out tomorrow. I’ll pay for you to get wasted. You can puke on me in a taxi. Just like old times.”

“That happened once. And I wasn’t even drunk! I had food poisoning.”

“Then you can get food poisoning again.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Bucky replied. He paused, then repeated, much more quietly, “we’re getting married.”

“I know.” Leah flopped onto the couch. “How’re you feeling about it?”

“I mean, good. I…” He didn’t say anything for a moment. “He says he gets why it matters, now. To me. Having our names together somewhere.”

“It sounded to me like he does,” Leah said honestly. Then there was some muffled Steve-voice in the background on Bucky’s end of the call, followed by ominous noises. “Come on,” Leah groaned.

“Sorry,” Bucky said, “I gotta go.”

“Have your fun before the bed death kicks in,” Leah told him, and hung up.

When she came back into the bedroom, Nat was sitting up in bed. Leah felt a twinge of guilt, even though there wasn’t really anything she could’ve done differently: Nat was just a light sleeper. More accurately, she only ever seemed to be half-asleep.

“Steve and Bucky are getting married,” Leah told her. She nuzzled against Nat’s collarbone briefly, just because she could. Nat scratched her nails gently across Leah’s shoulder blade. “Sorry I woke you up,” Leah mumbled.

“That news is worth waking up for.”

Leah propped herself up on her elbows to face Nat. A few months into their relationship, Leah had had to make herself stop staring at Nat in a trance during every gap in conversation. Not that Nat didn’t do any staring herself—she was the opposite of demonstrative, but Leah knew which of her micro-expressions meant what, with respect to Leah’s body. (Leah’s calves, specifically. Nat had a weird calves thing.)

But being civil-unioned to a person meant you got to stare at them sometimes. Leah smiled at Nat. “Wow,” she said. “That isn’t very hard-boiled of you.”

Nat raised an eyebrow. “Weird adjective.”

“It’s descriptive,” Leah said. “You’re basically shirred now. Even poached.”

“I have no idea why you’re still going with thismetaphor.”

“You love them.”

“The eggs or the happy couple?” Nat laughed when Leah made a face. “I’m just excited to give a toast about how mean Steve probably is during sex. Way meaner than he looks, I think.”

Leah elected to roll over and go to sleep rather than relive the hundreds of hours of conversation she and Bucky had had on this very topic.

+++

When Leah told her father, whom Bucky had once described as “the Jean-Luc Picard of Miami-Dade County,” about the engagement, he thought, at first, that it was just a problem with her French. “This is humiliating,” he told her in English. “My daughter has a Haitian flag shirt, but any actual connection to her culture? That would be asking too much.”

“No, papa,” she said, trying very hard. “In reality, favorite friend Barnes and American Captain will obtain a marriage.”

“Just tell me in the language you know,” he said. “Barnes is getting married?”

“Yeah!”

“Who’s the guy?”

“I told you. Captain America.”

After the shock had died down and Leah had done some explaining, her dad sniffled a little. It made Leah sort of wish her own civil union hadn’t occurred in total secrecy. Suppressed-tears-of-joy Louis Celestin was a rare and wonderful thing to behold.

“Would your mother have liked Captain America?”

Even in a language she had only ever really known how to complain about curfew and swear in, Leah could understand that. “She would’ve loved him,” she said, and then, “also, his French is perfect.”

“Perfect as Romanoff’s?”

She laughed. “That’s not really a fair comparison.”

+++

Leah tried to involve herself as little as possible in the wedding-planning process, but some things were inevitable. Case in point: bachelor parties.

“Does Barnes have an opinion on whether to do a joint thing?” Sam asked. “I mean, an opinion he’s willing to tell you.”

“Not so far.” Leah held the phone between her shoulder and her ear while she took a carton of orange juice out of the fridge. She brought it with her to the couch. “I can tell you now, Steve does not like all of Bucky’s friends.”

“Does he make that lust-rage hybrid face?”

“Yep,” Leah said. “God, I really hate that face.”

Sam shuddered. “Have you ever seen him watch a Clark Gable movie?”

“Shut up shut up shut up.”

“Okay, okay.” Sam laughed. “Separate parties.”

“Good call.” Leah took a contemplative sip of juice. (More of a brief chug, really. It was pretty impossible to sip from a quart of Tropicana.) “So,” she decided, “I’ll take Bucky and everyone to some straight strip club where he can feel like he passes one last time before he gets domestic partnered. You should take Steve to, I don’t know. Somewhere with...”

“That gay shit. And without stripping.”

“Basically.”

“Makes sense,” Sam said. “Alright, I gotta go.”

“Hold on a second. Are you bringing anyone?”

Sam groaned. “Are you fucking kidding? All of you.”

“Steve said that on vacation with you—“

“Then Steve forgot that we decided Cape May 2020 was a fight club deal.”

“Hey, come on. Nat thinks you’re dating a politician. Are you dating a politician? Paul Ryan is sort of hot.”

“You assume I’d date a _Republican_ politician?”

“To convert him.”

“Bye.”

Sam and Steve and Nat and whoever else Steve liked enough to invite went to some niche club for gay prudes, Leah assumed. Meanwhile, she, Bucky, and a large cohort of balding guys who referred to Bucky exclusively as “Buckyballs” went to a mainstream, very hetero club, albeit one with a handful of male strippers. It wasn’t like this party was under any impression Bucky was straight, considering the occasion, so having a bachelor party with only female dancers would be kind of depressing. (Though Leah doubted Bucky was deriving much more enjoyment from the men than the women. His type was pretty damn narrow, and none of these were bashful-looking, visibly queer blonde guys with long eyelashes.)

Bucky took a couple puffs off a cigar over the course of the night. Later, once the “Buckyballs”-callers had gone, he took a few more puffs off the massive joint Leah had brought as a nicotine-free alternative. “For the good of your lungs,” she said, passing it to him. They were sitting on the steps of some brownstone, trading off the joint and a gyro they’d bought. It was exactly, eerily, what they’d done as kids together.

The last time they’d sat, loitering and blazed, like this, marriage had presented major obstacles to both Leah and Bucky. Marriage seemed, to Leah, like something that happened to lesbians less slutty and more capable of sustained interested than she was. To Bucky, it was what you did to convince the girl you were with that you loved her without having to have extra sex with her over it. Now—well. Leah’s teenage self would have fainted dead away, had she met Nat: Nat with the dermal fillers she got to make herself temporarily less attractive (“I’ve been IDed through my jawline, it’s not a joke”), Nat who once got so mad about an episode of _Breaking Bad_ she found Brian Cranston’s cell phone number and sent him a different vague threat every day for a week, Nat who never, ever got boring.

And Leah could remember Bucky calling Captain America “hotter before the super soldier shit. But also hot after it. No homo” back in the tenth grade.

“I fuckin’ love you,” this Bucky—out, adult, engaged Bucky—said, before taking a colossal hit.

After some length of time between five minutes and an hour of them alternately shooting the shit and staring blankly in the manner of all people whose tolerances have turned out to be lower than they remembered, Bucky turned to Leah, suddenly frowning. “I wish we’d done this when Peggy was still around,” Bucky told her, quietly.

It took Leah a long, very stoned moment to figure out he meant getting married, not getting high.

“It’s like—I’m his new life,” Bucky continues. “Or, you know, a lot of it. And that’s great. But it’s not just…”

“His life,” Leah finished. Bucky nodded. “I thought you two resolved this two months in.”

“With Rye?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky shrugged, staring forward. “He tries,” he said, “but he can’t lie for shit.”

“You think he’s got any more of a new life and an old life than you do? That’s just being a person with a brain. Believe me. I’m not great at all of the, whatever, relationship everything, but I’m the expert on this.” This was as close as Leah got to talking with him about the _my girlfriend/wife/whatever’s childhood memories consist of three or four scraps she’s managed to thread together, all full of horrible violence; also, she never quit SHIELD, so that’s always fun_ thing. Bucky knew all of Leah’s family shit, and only some of her Nat shit. Leah knew all of Bucky’s Steve shit, and only some of his family shit—that was just how it went with them. But this situation called for a reminder: Leah knew what she was talking about. She knew what it was to love somebody ineffable, somebody whose history couldn’t be cracked. There was no space in Nat’s past for Leah, and there never would be.

But there was space in Nat’s future for Leah, and Leah planned on making use of every square foot.

The same was true for Steve and Bucky, except that they had to deal with much less traumatic memory-loss.

For a few seconds after Leah spoke, Bucky just stared forward at the street. Then he turned to her again. “How’d I end up with both of you?”

“Assholes?” she guessed. “No, wait. Leos?”

He hugged her, then stood up and spun her around out of spite.

+++

Their wedding was outside, on an April day that wasn’t quite cold enough to complain about. The ceremony was as bare-bones as you could get. Rather than have one of those Jewish-Catholic hybrid weddings, they went totally secular. Leah wasn’t sure who was making a concession to whom there, but it seemed like a good thing, in any case. No one gave either of them away, partly because they were both guys and partly because Steve still had all his damn convictions and partly because both of them would end up having sort of depressing giving-away situations, even though Bucky and his dad had recently started speaking like friendly acquaintances (a big improvement from hostile ex-roommates).

Leah cried, of course. What set her off was when Bucky rolled his eyes as Steve was trying to get the ring on his finger. Of all the stupid things.

Becca cried about that, too, though, which made it less embarrassing. And she was in front of everyone (the agreement had been that Becca would deal with the ceremony and Leah would coordinate the debauchery). And Sam, who was (obviously, and skillfully) Steve’s best man, did bring someone. His name was Raj, and he had started best-friend-in-laws texting Steve months ago. The fact that Steve had been able to keep a secret was a much bigger topic of conversation than his betrayal in not spilling earlier.

After some shuffling and drinking and seat-finding, it was time for Leah to give a toast. She stood up, cleared her throat, and tried to convince herself she was getting ready to lecture on linear algebra. But it turned out that just looking at Bucky—Bucky in his tux, hair pulled back and way shinier than usual, his crazy-happy eyes rimmed red with tears and his hand on Steve’s—was a much better antidote to stage fright.

Leah talked about how she and Bucky had met: in a fire drill during fourth-period pre-calc, when Leah had interrupted a Mets v. Yankees debate Bucky’d been having with some guy from the baseball team he’d been hooking up with. (Her contribution: fuck both, and also, Barnes, I like your Tupac shirt, even though it’s pretty obvious you only chose it because of how prominently it features his eyelashes.) She talked about how Bucky’s dumbassery was sometimes redeemed by his other qualities, like the strongest intuitive grasp of other people’s needs and desire to help fill them Leah had ever seen.

“So,” she finished, “I’m glad you get that, Steve. The best thing I can say about either of you is that you deserve each other. Which is way more of a compliment than an insult.”

She cried a little more. Bucky, on the other hand, was all-out bawling by the end. Steve started out blinking back attractive consumptive-heroine-on-deathbeds tears, but after Sam’s toast, he succumbed to weeping, too. They danced to some Ella Fitzgerald song Bucky had stolen Leah’s stereo to play all the time before he moved in with Steve.

After several drinks, hugs, and dances, Nat came up behind Leah, snaked her arms around her waist and kissed her shoulder.

Leah turned around to face her. Nat was wearing a blue dress she had gotten tailored at least 4 times. Leah was wearing a significantly less femme version of the same.

“The hell is this? A public display of affection?” Leah asked. “Thought you only did these undercover.”

“Ha ha,” Nat replies. “Yeah, we’re in mortal danger. Good think I have two Glocks on me.”

The thing was that she probably did. Leah leaned down to kiss her cheek. “My hero,” she said.

Nat pecked Leah on the mouth before pulling away. “I’m gonna try to teach Rogers to dance,” she said. “It’s not fair to the other groom that he can’t even sway properly.”

“Have fun,” Leah said. She leaned against a table to sip her wine. A few minutes later, Bucky approached her, looking like his joy was increasing the effect of his blood alcohol content tenfold.

“Getting married is fuckin’ awesome,” he told Leah. “You and Widow should try it.”

Well: it was now or never, and never wasn’t really an option. “Already did,” she replied. “We got a civil union awhile ago.” _Six months ago_ would be way too exact: Leah didn’t want Bucky to be able to backtrack and yell at her for lying about why she went to Montauk in October. (She’d told him Nat had to break into somebody’s vacation home for documents.)

Bucky stared at her.

“What?”

“You didn’t tell me?

“We didn’t want to make a big deal out of it,” she said, and then made puppy dog eyes until Bucky stopped glaring at her.

“So you tell me now, when I’m too happy to be mad.”

“Yep.”

Suddenly, Bucky leaned in to give her a loud, disgusting kiss on the cheek. “I told you you’d be fine,” he said into her ear.

“And I told you the same. Many times, and to a lot more backlash.”

Bucky looked at her fondly. “You’ve always been the smart one.” Before she could respond, he sighed heavily, already walking away. “I gotta fill my husband in on this.”

+++

Leah didn’t spend the rest of her increasingly-drunk night contemplating the odds of love generally, or of gay love specifically. She didn’t think about how beautiful Nat looked in her dress, for the most part. She barely wondered what her own mother would do if she were at the wedding with them, barely imagined the toast she’d have given. Not then, at least. What Leah thought about instead was this:

Loving the same person for fifteen years really meant loving a nesting-doll of people. The Bucky who had broken up with Olivia by email lived inside the Bucky who’d invited Olivia to his wedding over the phone, like a grownup, even though she worked in Australia now, which would’ve given him a great excuse for not even trying. The Bucky Leah had been furious with for enlisting lived inside the Bucky who supported Leah through her mother’s death, even though Leah had been calling him a selfish shithead a month prior.

And the Bucky who had once told Leah, after drinking an indeterminate quantity of UV Blue, that just because she had to be all dykey everywhere didn’t mean he had to give up being normal, too, was still alive. But she forgave him now, the same way she’d forgiven him that awful night in their freshman year of college. She forgave him because he’d apologized, sure. But she mostly forgave him because she knew he’d never believed it. He had known, even then, that he was the one giving up. And he made the choice, eventually, to stop. He decided to care about himself, and it made him care about Leah better.

Because that was what loving someone for fifteen years meant: to care about them was to care about yourself, and vice versa. This made the bad shit hurt twice as much as it would’ve if you weren’t conjoined with somebody like that. But it also made the good shit matter doubly.

Leah loved that whole stupid nesting doll of a person so much she had to take a break to cry in a Port-a-Potty about him. But when she returned, she knew: loving someone for fifteen years was absolutely worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i changed the tags because this chapter contains genuine-article Lesbian Content
> 
> i'm on tumblr at palebluehalo and i want to talk to each and every one of you


End file.
